




^ ^^-v. 









♦ Ay 



V^. 



.V «... "^^ A^ •*'• 









'^^ 










OUR NEW HERALDRY 



OUR NEW 
HERALDRY 



By John 



Caryl j-4-trc^^n^a- . 




03} « J >a* 



.^ 9 J t O 



> J J J J i > » 



J , J J, J 



IjOWMAN^ & HAXrORD 

? ^ ^ PUBLiISHEBS 5 5 5 

Skattlk, TVashington 



COPTBIGHTKD 1902 






THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copiea Received 

MAY, 20 1902 

Copyright entry 

CLASS €K xXc. No. 

COPY 8. 



A LETTER 

Dearest Brother: 

Several acquaintances of mine to whom I showed the manu- 
script of this book, afterward looked at me so askance and with 
such a knowing expression in their eyes, that I felt myself 
accused by them, without any other words, of a sort of moral 
turpitude, and — I know not what — hidden sins. Though I said 
nothing to them, I was sorely pained that they should harbor 
such ill thoughts of me, for, while I study a seeming outward 
indifference to public opinion, yet to you I confess that there 
is no man, woman or child so insignificant or lowly but has 
power to do me some hurt by thinking evil of me. You will un- 
derstand this without more words, since, as I believe, you are 
yourself off the same piece with me for this over-sensitive qual- 
ity. 

That these acquaintances should so misjudge me from this 
book, and remembering that I have been separated from you 
now upward of eleven years, has served to kindle in me the 
gravest apprehension lest you, also, might see something in this 
writing of mine to arouse a doubt in you whether 1 am the same 
still in those simples of virtue which we held in common when 
we were boys together. On this, dear brother, I hasten to re- 
assure you. My belief has only grown the more firm that in 
such relations between man and woman, there should ever be 
present a gentle purity, truth and the utmost honor. That 
sweet fire of love burns never with an enduring flame unless 
these three stand guard as vestals to it. I thank God a thou- 
sand times that your father and mine was so just and pure a 
man, and that he reared his children up in the ways of chastity 
and virtue, enforcing the lesson, not so much by words, as by 
his own example. During the twenty years that I lived under 
his roof, I never once heard a profane or lewd word drop from 
the lips of this humble, simple and unaffected man. The re- 
membrance of the fortitude with which he bore his poverty 
and lowly station, barred as he was from all intercourse with 
books — those fountains of knowledge — (for as you know he was 
wholly unlettered, though through no fault of his) has many 
times excited in me the most intense admiration and wonder — 
the more so of late years as my understanding of the world has 
broadened. But it often happens that men in the humblest 
walks of life, by a sort of instinct, hit upon that pure and 
peaceful mode of living which philosophy, with all its flourish- 
ing of trumpets and sounding phrases, misses; as witness Tol- 
stoi's great peasant. 

But to return again to this little book: On looking it over 
now, three years after it was written (it has lain in my desk 
during that time), I detect in it a vein of bitterness and spleen, 
not to say ribaldry, which much displeases me. I would not, 
no, nor could I if I would, v/rite in that spirit today; and if 
God spares me my life for a few more years, I promise to re- 
deem these faults in it by some future work. 
Your Affectionate Brother, 

March 17th, 1902. JOHN CARYL. 



PREFACE 

To write a preface to this first work of mine 
seemed in the beginning to be the least of all my 
labors. Indeed, I was greedy to undertake, and 
could scarce wait the orderly finishing of what is 
here following, but was pressed often to stop in 
its midst and do the last thing first. Yet now that 
the task is to my hand, I find it not easy, but of 
great difficulty rather, so much so, I may well say, 
that after two or three attempts — each a failure — I 
was almost persuaded to forego so old a custom, 
and to send this little book into the world unher- 
alded by any word of mine. Nor was my diffi- 
culty anything the less for remembering that of 
late our books and letters are more ornamented 
with prefaces, borders and trimmings without, than 
by any substance or beauty within, so that you 
shall any day see a book printed of some ancient 
master having his work set down in so small, so 
obscure and timid ^a frame that the eye will be 
pained to catch the word, while that which the 
editor has to say (being no small part) is set in 
bold letters, bearing such inequality to that other 
and crowding it so from the very page as to put 
you straight to wondering whether this book were 
printed — not so much for love of the master — as 
for glory of its editor. Being so perplexed, three 
times I destroyed that I had written for I could not 
bring it to my liking, and at the last (contrary to 
what is usual with me in such sort) I thought to 



take the advice of a good friend on it whose coun- 
sels often in affairs of business stayed me when I 
was wavering. I sought this friend and submitted 
to him my difficulty of a preface. 

"What! And you have written a book," he said 
in amazement, for I had not before told him of it. 

**Yes," I answered with face flushed and feeling 
very guilty, I know not why. 

"Ah ! did I ever dream you would commit this 
folly," he added, "you of all men, who are so timid 
as to be frightened into silence at the sound of 
your own voice in a crowd of five persons present. 
Yet you, who are unable to speak to the few with 
assurance, will think to do it now to the world I 
You are like a little boy, truly, who, fearful of pad- 
dling in the pond, must need leap now into the 
ocean. Never before did I suspect you of folly, 
much less of vanity, but I see them both in this. 
Consider it well, my friend, consider, I beg of you, 
ere you do this thing, for it cannot be but you will 
repent later the putting of your name, down in 
that catalogue of misguided scribblers that of late 
afflict mankind. Leave this thing now undone that 
your more ripe judgment gladly would undo here- 
after." 

I told him that I had considered, and that it 
was to publish it. 

"Then am I truly sorry for you that you will not 
be advised," he said. "Reflect, I pray you, reflect 
if you will, what tons of printed rubbish under that 
name of books are annually given currency that 

8 



were far better dumped headlong into the sea! 
Yet you would add more to this to further cloy 
men's appetites that are already grievously dis- 
tempered by the sick dose? I accredited you with 
better wisdom, not to say charity to your fellows, 
who have already endured much and complained 
little." 

"And speaking now for myself alone, I am «i 
deceived man or I smell out amid these multitudes 
of books, the utter rout, the confusion and decay of 
our institutions, of our learning and advancement, 
not to say of our civilization itself, of which we 
are so vain ; for it may be well affirmed that never 
was there a state in ancient times but, at the very 
season of its decay, it was given utterly over to the 
like usage — of vain conceits — of false imaginings — 
of refining of wits — of quibbling and the play on 
words by writing of many books, as both Rome and 
Greece will bear good witness of, and Egypt, Persia 
and the Jews, that never wrote so much as in the 
period of their fall. For as a woman who from 
age, sickness or such cause, has grown ugly that 
was once a favorite, will have recourse then to 
paints, powders, washes, wigs and giddy notions, 
that she may, in this wooden way, make good the 
loss of what she had before by nature, so will a 
people in their decline, by much writing, fuss, 
flurry, and a show of learning, seek to uphold their 
former sufficiency. And to the like example it may 
be noted, too, that the rose is never so near its 
dissolution as when it is full blown, for being then 



most showy, its decline also is already set in. I 
cannot better speak of the many silly books that are 
ever coming forth of late from whatever quarter 
people inhabit than to liken them to those erup- 
tions, rashes and scabs on the skin of him who is 
in a virulent fever, for as this one has a great ill- 
ness, so have those people a great sickness, as was 
so of France in that memorable Revolution. When 
were books before of so common a kind as in that 
troublous day, and so freely written and printed? 
Be persuaded, therefore, and leave off now." 

"Or if you will write a book in spite of all warn- 
ing and all example, let it be of this sort — that you 
deal in it of some correction to be appointed by the 
law against all unprofitable scribblers that are 
grown to such an abuse amongst us. For why is 
it that men should busy themselves to enact laws 
to say which and in what manner compounds shall 
be done of butters, tallows and the lard of pigs, of 
tobaccos, drugs and poisons and such like gross 
things that minister only to the body's use, if they 
leave it to each man's folly to judge of that food 
the mind shall have? Ah, truly, is not the mind 
more delicate than the body, that its food, too, 
should be regarded?" 

This and more of its kind my friend said to me, 
but as I did not yield, he quit me, showing more 
anger than I had before known in him who was 
ever mild and gentle. But though he did not dis- 
suade me from my first purpose, nevettheless his 
words made that impression on me that I have 

lO 



grave misgivings whether he were not in the right 
and I wrong. And here I must admit it, as I have 
ever held in keeping with my friend, that one had 
better read little, and it good, than to read much 
of a sort indifferent or bad ; and as what men speak 
is for the most part folly, so, too, is what they write 
in the mass — since the poverty of the mind is no 
whit abated for spreading upon paper — and out of 
ten thousand of such oysters caught, there is but 
one jewel saved. It is therefore with a feeling 
rather of mistrust and sadness than of joy and 
assurance that I send this little work forth from 
my hand and leave others to judge of it. I could 
amend much that is in it, and indeed, were I asked 
how I should have it to please me, I would answer, 
to destroy this and re-write all from the beginning. 
This much more will I add — that when the critics 
have given it their illest praise I can lend them 
words to say more, for its weaknesses are not un- 
known to me who fashioned it. And to conclude, 
this further: I have struck my pick now into this 
new ground and loosed these cap-stones and outer- 
croppings, as a miner who would make test of an 
untried hill ; whether it be a lode beneath contain- 
ing indifferent metal or only a quarry of sand (of 
which kind, God knows, we need no more), I must 
leave to the opinions of the few who shall be assay- 
ers for me to these top-stones of it, and to their 
charitable judgments I submit all, patiently await- 
ing report from them whether it be not a useless 
labor to delve deeper into so poor a mine. 

J. c. 



II 



PERSONS 

GROSSCROP, A wealthy citizen. ' 

WALTER, His Son. 

BEAKS, A friend to Grosscrop. 

PINKWORT, A preacher. 

QUILLET, Editor of the Daily Breakwind. 

WATTLES, Sporting editor of the Breakwind. 

PLAYFAIR, A friend to Quillet. 

WEBFOOT, A servant to Grosscrop. 

MRS. BEAKS, Wife to Beaks. 

MRS. CRANEBILL, Her friend. 

MRS. GROSSCROP, Wife to Grosscrop. 

KATE, A daughter to Grosscrop. 

JULLA, A servant to Mrs. Beaks. 

SEVERAL WOMEN. 

A BOY. 

DIVERS LABORING MEN. 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 



SCENE I 



STAGE REPRESENTING ROOM IN BEAKS' 

HOUSE 

(Enter Prologue.) 
PRO. — If the age we Jive in would have measure 
of himself; if he would see his image in a glass; 
if — if — God ! I fear I have clean forgot the beastly 
lines ! I was to render a prologue to this halting 
play that's here to be enacted, but 'fore heaven I've 
lost every word! Let me see again — if any man — 
it's not so — if the busy world — not that, either! 
What a plague to have a loose memory as I have ! 
If an actor shall be damned for nothing else he 
shall be damned for that ! And docked, too ! And 
discharged, too ! So that his fate then shall be to 
be damned, docked and discharged, or if any should 
prefer it more politely, discharged, docked and 
damned, for damnation is ever an actor's end ! Once 
more — if — if — O the devil have that word "if and 
any scurvy author to employ it ! If — if — if — 

1st WOMAN (in the audience) — Could you tell 
us, sir, if the Ladies' Guild, sir, of church, sir, is to 
meet in this house tonight, sir, or no, sir? 

2nd WOMAN (in the audience). — We were told 



14 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

'twould be in this room, and our pastor, Rev. Small- 
fry, to talk. 

PRO. — Here is a pretty mess ! Ladies, you are 
misguided ! 

2nd WOMAN. — O good God! We are decent 
women. 

PRO. — This, ladies, is a play-house. 
1st WOMAN. — Is't a theatre, sir, where they do 
plays, sir? 

PRO. — It is so, and as measly a play coming now 
on as was ever writ by blockhead, that uses twenty 
*'ifs" in the prologue of it! If — if — O that some 
other ass had this task off my hands ! 

1st WOMAN. — I've a mind to sit it out, Martha, 
for experience's sake and use in meeting! I never 
in my life was in a theatre to see any play acted. 
I've a mind to sit to it, Martha. 

2nd WOMAN.— O good God ! 

1st WOMAN. — Can we sit a seat, sir, if we stay. 

PRO. — Upon the stage itself! You shall have 
no less ! Come, you shall have them here ! 

1st WOMAN. — He seems cordial and not all 
abandoned ! Let us sit it out, Martha ! 

2nd WOMAN.— Good God! 

1st WOMAN. — Yes, we will sit, sir! I've a mind 
to know what a play is like and what experience 
may be drawn for Christian use. 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 15 

(Women go on stage.) 

2nd WOMAN.— O good God! 

PRO. — Have you no other English but "Good 
God?" O! I shall be bounced sure for this failure 
of my prologue ! If the gilded age — O beastly — 

If wives to husbands were but true, 
And they to wives would only do; 

If marriage soured not in a week, 

If maids would shun instead of seek, 

If— 

Out on this ape's gibberish which is no part to 
my prologue ! O I fear grievously that I shall be 
driven to forego this prologue altogether, for the 
players will be here directly! Well, let me impro- 
vise now a trifle to put all on the track of what 
follows : And since the magazine of memory is 
locked against me, let me have recourse now to the 
store-house of my wits] Here comes Authority! 

(Enter Manager.) 

MANAGER. — Good people, with patience hear 
this sad mischance that has befallen us. It is our 
ill-luck's plight to forego this play tonight, for our 
chief actress lies now abed with a wrenched groin 
unhappily received, and so cannot appear before 
you. This, with saddest regret, I tell you, craving 
your forbearance. 

PRO. (aside). — O good! O here is meat to me 
that have forgot these doggerel lines, for now I 



i6 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

am discharged of them ! It is a pity, sir, but how 
came she hurt by so uncommon a wound? 

MANAGER. — O very simply, for she would have 
it to stand for her picture to a journeyman artist 
and — 

PRO.— Or sit for it? 

MANAGER. — No, but to stand* it is a fashion 
with her to stand for it, and her shapely foot high 
aloft, and at this standing she must need outdo all 
former trials and, as it were, ambitiously to heave 
her little ankle so high up — so very high — 

PRO. — Ankle? It was foot before. 

MANAGER. — And ankle, too — and in the rais- 
ing of her limb — 

PRO. (Aside). — O monstrous! This foot has 
grown now to a limb. What mock-shame drives 
him from that honest word leg, which would ex- 
press his true meaning? 

MANAGER. — That some tender cord about her 
groin was wrenched, or lacerated, or cracked, or I 
know not how the physicians name it. 

PRO. — O a pity on this poor cracked vase ! 

MANAGER. — Therefore, good friends, our en- 
tertainment now is off, and so must bid you all 
good-night. 

OLD MAN (In audience). — No, then, good 
Master Manager, but have advice of me to pull 
you from this pinch ; it may well serve you to 
hear so humble a one. 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 17 

MANAGER.— Who are you, sir? 

OLD MAN. — A humble citizen; yet not so hum- 
ble but what he dares to speak his mind upon oc- 
casion and will on this. 

MANAGER. — Speak it, my aged sir. So white 
a beard should hold some intercourse with judg- 
ment. What is it you would say? 

OLD MAN. — Why, nothing but to play that 
play my son wrote for you. 

MANAGER.— That your son wrote? 

OLD MAN. — And which you last week, like an 
upstart crackle-brain, refused, and was pleased 
then to call it old, stilted, affected, flat, and in style 
not gathered from the gypsy language of the street, 
not modeled on your lady's tea-talk which weakly 
and inserviceable yarn is the only licensed thread 
our authors now may weave with by your permis- 
sion ; these were your words against it^ with fur- 
ther phrases borrowed of the critic's lists, all rolled 
so smooth and worn by use in every tongue and to 
every meaning, as to have lost all meaning. O ! I 
will let my mind out now that my mouth is open! 

MANAGER. — It is a little mind and a big mouth. 
You well may let so small a weasel through so 
great an orifice. Old man, your beard belies you. 

OLD MAN. — So are you belied by your pre- 
sumption ! I will match the merit of my son's 
good play against such harlotry stuff as you per- 
form here amongst you to disgrace any stage. Why, 



i8 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

these hoarse horse-plays that you do of late have 
neither wit nor cunning to make any laugh but 
only some few vulgar devices unworthy ever to 
have been stolen of Kaffirs, where for certain they 
were first bred. And in this sort, I was shamed 
last week to see one of your principal players fall 
flat upon his bruised buttock for humor's sake, and 
another, to the same end, sat himself upright on 
a hot stove howling, and still another having 
clothes and whiskers grimy with the contents of a 
night-chamber emptied upon him, as it were, by 
accident, and yet another flung from a window 
above two stories high by his brother clown — and 
all this to set on the gallery's cheap row to roar, 
while those of judgment inwardly groaned. And 
these others amongst you, your lady actresses, that 
I have witnessed — 

MANAGER. — Here is a vixen truly! Our lady 
actresses — why, what of our ladies? 

OLD MAN. — O they are a vile lot, giddily to 
cloak over an honest word and shamc-facedly to 
hide it, yet boldly in the eyes of all to have no blush 
but to mimic by their body's gestures, those ful- 
some motions, those shuffling trials, by prodigal 
Nature, framed only for the couch ! As God's my 
witness, I would geld a son of mine who would so 
villainously invent ! 

PRO. — O let me put the smudge to this barbed 
hedge-hog! Come! I will smoke him from his 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 19 

hole ! Who, sir, is this son of yours that any should 
ever read what he may write, much less to act it? 
What reputation does he bear? 

OLD ]\IAN. — Why, none at all, since it is his 
first essay. 

PRO. — No reputation ? Go to, then ! How so 
should he be read or acted? Let him first hunt a 
reputation out ! It is no matter how if he but gets 
it, and so his name be well noised about on every 
tong-ue, and here let me advise you in the way: If 
he be of sturdy build and muscled, with knuckles 
high-set and flinty, get him a trainer for the ring, 
and when he overcomes some two or three in it, 
why then his fortune's made — his fame's assured — 
his verses and opinions will be read; he cannot 
write so fast but he will sell, and they will read. 

OLD MAN. — But my son is frail in body, not 
serviceable to the ring. 

PRO. — O then make any other notable man of 
him — it is no matter — a skillful, great player at 
ball, tennis, cards, dice, ten-pins, chess, billiards, 
or on the wheel to scorch down steep hills, making 
all eyes bulge ; or let him be a tall hammerer of pul- 
pit-rails to startle women with a resonant nasal 
twang, regardless whether he speaks anything; or, 
if he has a taste for finance, let him turn brewer and 
grow rich, in that or any kindred calling, so that 
when he walks or rides to take the air, men will 
point to him saying, "There goes such-a-one, a 



20 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

great man," and straight will relate some pretty 
story of him. Let him be any of these, and after, 
but compose some doggerel verse, hire a dull book 
written, or mouth into a phonograph, and he shall 
be famous forever for it. Why, those darling dolts 
— the willy-nilly people — will go mad or they shall 
read that verse, possess that book, or hear that 
voice of his. But tell me, old man, what name has 
this play your son wrote? 

OLD MAN. — For want of a better it is called 
"Our New Heraldry." 

PRO. — Why, that one? I know it well, and 
not to be fulsome in its praise, I have seen worse 
plays staged. Now, as I live, I've a mind to see it 
played, and for tonight, too ! (To manager) Sir, be 
persuaded to have it acted. 

MANAGER. — O it is a dry thing in blank verse ! 
I could not suffer a play in blank verse ! 

PRO. — Let not that hinder you, sir ! I have a 
pair of forceps will undo it of that evil. 

MANAGER.— How so? 

PRO. — Why, with them to pull out the capital 
letter from every ten syllables ; for, as you must 
know, blank verse now differs only from prose by 
this thicker infusion of capital characters in the 
lines. And to tell you the truth, I have myself al- 
ready cured it of that fault. 

MANAGER. — If so you've mended it; yet in 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 21 

style and phrasing it is unsuited wholly to the 
present, thoug-h in matter dealing with our time. 

PRO. — Here is a more grievous fault, yet one 
that, in part, I pardon him of, since, as I remember, 
he strives not to forsake nature's truth, which in 
essence is ever the same, though in what words 
soever expressed ; for truth must ever be the main- 
spring and chiefest preservative, to all writings, 
and expressions but secondary to it. An author's 
mode is particular to him, as a nation's language is 
to it, but what of truth he writes or they utter, is 
common to the full stock and warehouse of world, 
being not the single heritage — either of this man 
or that nation — but of all men and all nations. 
Words, therefore, are but the vehicles of carriage 
and not the goods themselves ; and what a blind 
merchant might not that one be esteemed, who 
would reject wholesome and profitable merchan- 
dise from his store because, perchance, it was not 
brought thither upon those small truckles and 
petty hand-carts which are in every fist? 

MANAGER. — O you discourse truly as for a fee ! 

PRO. — Nay, now, good sir, that I think more on 
it, I will play the attorney to his son's good cause 
to advance it for him, but without fee. And to 
this purpose we speak of, I will tender you this 
likeness : Not in the world did great painter make 
ever his picture from the camera's true image, but 
rather upon the canvas spread some subtler es- 
sence of his inward soul to take all eyes prisoner, 



22 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

and so in like kind do master writers out of this 
inward spirit give infusion to their work. O let 
your housewives pray, and pray devoutly, that two 
such sweet arts may never fall into a pair of vul- 
gar trades ! 

MANAGER.— To trades? How so to trades? 

PRO. — Why, that great painters should ever 
grow to little photographers, or that master writers 
should shrivel down to dry reporters, literally to 
take their discourses off men's lips, and so infect 
letters with the dry-rot. If I must write, let me 
have full scope, and withal, more graceful words 
to it, than live in the soft brain of that unctuous, 
wind-broken and over-dressed dame yonder, who 
stars it for fair speeches at evening parties among 
a score of friends. Why, no taxing whatsoever of 
her dull wits will deliver her of above a few hun- 
dred set words, or any utterance worth the breath 
to puff it from the lips. 

MANAGER. — Your earnest speech merits a bet- 
ter cause. Not what you say but my necessity per- 
suades me to give his play a trial, with those 
amendments which you say you made to it. 

PRO. — O trulv I have transformed it from poor 
verse to indifferent prose, and the company have 
had it in practive ever since. You shall find every- 
one with his part well remembered. 

MANAGER. — I will go, then, and acquaint them 
with this change, and so make ready the play. 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 23 

(Exit Manager.) 
PRO. — Old man, you owe me thanks for this. 
OLD MAN. — And give them freely. 

PRO. — O ! if what I now said were but published 
to the world, you should have ten thousand little 
quills tickling whole reams of virgin paper to con- 
fute this heresy. 

2nd WOMAN.— O good God ! 

PRO. (Aside). — Here is a cow has no corn in 
her maw but only this wilted husk. Poor bos ! poor 
hollow-horn ! A parrot was her tutor ! 

1st WOMAN. — Is't a Christian play, sir, that's 
to be acted? 

PRO. (Aside).— Truly now shall I be held to 
stand sponsor to this play and make false promises 
in its behalf, as a god-father at baptism does when 
he puts his good pledge up that this child will for- 
sake the devil. — O the play itself is indifferently 
honest — but the actors — I will not answer for the 
actors that are to play it. 

1st WOMAN. — Satan was ever partial to play- 
houses and actors, I've heard said. Are there no 
bawdy sones in it? 

PRO. — No, none ; for our company's voices are all 
like un-calved cows, they are dry and tuned to no 
music but bellowing only. Therefore is every- 
thing of the sort culled carefully out of the first 
text, as you should hide with mufflers a bull's 
trademarks and the insignia of his office, ere you 



2^ OUR NEW HERALDRY 

should show the beast to fine lady to be shocked at 
wanton nature's handwork that hung these rough 
exteriors on him. But such exteriors are dipt 
from our play and cards duly set to aid the imagina- 
tions of shy ones ; and instancing this, let it be a 
billy-goat you'd have or the least of nature's work, 
and on that goat's belly you shall see hung a bag 
in nature, but in our play none, for our author has 
removed this bag and in its place a token set, with 
a cunning device which signifieth bag, yet shocks 
no one. 

2nd WOMAN.— O good God ! 

1st WOMAN. — And your lady actresses? are 
they decently dressed below the knees and no kick- 
ing o' the lamps? I hear it is a fashion in them to 
kick at lamps. 

PRO. — On my oath you shall see no lady's thigh 
tonight, nor will any lady's dugs wink at men's 
eyes above her bodice; though for myself, this is 
but ill praise to the play, and so will seem to all 
bald-heads. (Enter Beaks and Crosscrop.) But 
here they are at it now! 

1st WOMAN. — Be these two actors, sir? 

PRO. — So they call themselves, but are not called 
by many. 

1st WOMAN. — They dress not so strangely but 
I have seen the like before. Who is this stout man 
— this goodly-provisioned citizen in the reddish 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 



^5 



beard? I'll warrant he's the director of railroads 
or sits down on a banker's stool to give orders. 

PRO. — You shall see all presently ! His name is 
Grosscrop and he hunts an office now. You shall 
see him senator anon. That other is his friend 
Beaks, whom he has made cuckold of, and this 
here Beaks' house. (Pro. sits down.) List now! 
They will be at it presently! 

1st WOMAN. — Do not crowd me so close! 

PRO. — it is a weakness of nature in me that 
often serves me such unmannerly tricks in com- 
pany. I will stand over on your leeward side. 
But here's the play now! 

GROSSCROP.— Yet it is so, Beaks— we must 
conciliate the Daily Breakwind, this troublesome 
sheet — we must conciliate Quillet, its editor. For 
if we cannot do this I may never hope to be elected 
senator. So much I tell you in confidence that I 
would not confess in general. 

BEAKS. — It's true he heaps most vile abuse on 
you and in such a sort with particulars of fact and 
feigned truth that many, I fear, will believe it. 
But we can win in spite of this. It is a fault in you 
that your caution magnifies the man and his party's 
strength. 

GROSSCROP.— Not as I think. Beaks. 

BEAKS. — Yet you do it! Your caution enlarges 
him out of all true proportion ! 

GROSSCROP. — It is a good eye in warfare that 



26 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

sees the enemy, though but a weasel, as large as a 
camel, and so prepares. We must win Quillet 
would we win. 

BEAKS. — Then truly is there no hope of your 
election. He is bitterer against you than worm- 
wood, and for no other cause than that you are 
rich. Riches are the red rag flung in the eyes of 
this roaring ox. 

GROSSCROP.— A little diplomacy will soften 
many a turbulent one, and harder than Quillet, too. 

BEAKS. — Diplomacy ! O ! I had rather treat with 
an angry boar in terms of diplomat politeness than 
to soften him to our business by it, his radical opin- 
ions run riot so ; for it is to amend nothing, but 
destroy all. 

GROSSCROP. — It is a sore defect that no cor- 
rection is set by law against this wanton use of 
free opinion. There is no compound half so deadly 
of explosive chemistries, as to feed violent opinion 
to ignorant men. I think, indeed, it's true of us, 
that we today are a-sowing of the wind and the 
generation yet to come shall reap the whirlwind. 
It was for a use like this the adage first was made. 
And for this boldness now in this evil work I 
would gladly put this Quillet down, but that I 
need his party's strength in this. Therefore we 
must win him. 

BEAKS. — It is a task too great. Why, he hates 
all rich men, as the devil holv ash. There's no 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 27 

man holding to his account's credit a few thousand 
or odd dollars, but Quillet will spear him through 
and through with the poisoned lance of his abuse. 
And the more dastardly, vile, and venomous the 
abuse is, the redder grow his followers' cheeks with 
puffing out stinking breath in its applause. There 
is no hope to win him or them. 

GROSSCROP. — He is rancorous indeed. 

BEAKS. — Rancorous is scarce the word — ran- 
corous does not express so much ! Why, he'll tell 
them there is no man rich but stole it; that no 
lady rides in a carriage but adds bawdry to theft; 
that there's no tastily furnished house but's a den 
where brigands congregate to make parts between 
them of booty robbed of groaning labor. 

GROSSCROP.— He goes far in it. 

BEAKS. — He will liken the plentiful globe we 
live in to a bank of honeyed clover; the poor men 
in it, to the busy work bees who harvest this sweet- 
ness in ; the rich men to the drones who sit idle in 
the hive wasting the stored fruit; and to conclude, 
he will mock these dull workers who, as he says, 
are lacking in the wisdom of the bees to fall upon 
these drones and kill them. It is beyond us to 
pluck down this screaming daw to make any useful 
bird of him. 

GROSSCROP.— Yet we will make trial of it. I 
never yet knew bleating caterer to the common 
herd but that his watchful weather eye was open 



28 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

wide to his own personal gain when anj^ fortunate 
wind should blow him sops. Those poor ones 
most cry riches down that most desire them. We'll 
try what can be done. Let us about it now. 

(Exeunt Beaks and Grosscrop.) 
1st WOMAN. — They speak not so bad, sir. I 
would they had stayed a little longer. They are 
not wholly without sense in what they speak. 

PRO. — You shall see them again, good woman, 
but in the meanwhile others. 

1st WOMAN. — This Grosscrop is well favored 
and of good parts, I think, sir. 

PRO. — So do all women say. 

1st WOMAN. — He has a smack of scripture, too, 
about him, as I've observed, for I heard him speak 
there of winds and whirlwinds. I'd mind to give 
him the chapter and verse of it. Is he not a pious 
man? 

PRO. — Exceeding pious, but — 

ist WOMAN.— And moral, too? 

PRO. — O let not me be certifier to his character, 
but await you the play for it. He has a moral 
man's outside, and is within full of most moral 
saws and utterances. This in the world makes 
morality in the man, let him covertly do what 
beast's action he will. Put him down moral, then. 

1st WOMAN. — He had been a good deacon of 
church, I think. 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 29 

PRO. — O as excellent a deacon as ever put round 
buttock to front pew ! He has that quality above 
all else ! Why, he has despoiled more virgins of 
it than were ever does of a tender twelve- 
month done to a shameless bastardy by a crook- 
kneed and lecherous old fallow-buck ! What dea- 
con can excel him so? Nay, had his profit run 
more with church, he had been archbishop instead 
of deacon for this rare virtue in him ! Await the 
play now and you shall see all. 

2nd WOMAN. — Good God, is not this indecent? 

1st WOAIAN. — Take care you play us no trick, 
sir. Is this to be enacted? 

PRO. — You shall see. (Enter Mrs. Beaks and 
Mrs. Cranebill.) Here others come. 

1st WOMAN.— 'Fore God, if these two are not 
painted ! Yet they dress not so bad, and with more 
modesty than had been expected. Be their speeches 
womanly, sir? 

PRO. — O exceedingly, as you shall see, for 'tis 
to tell of jealous husbands cunningly outdone by 
wives, and wives by husbands. This is ever a 
woman's theme, therefore their speech is womanly. 
But here goes ! List now ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— Do not give way to this de- 
spair that does no good. Feathers will out again 
and clear himself of this undeserved charge. You 
kill yourself with fretting. 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— O it is too horrible, too 



30 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

horrible! And my brother, of all men, to fall to 
it ! It will be his death and mine as well ! 

MRS. BEAKS. — It will indeed be yours unless 
your courage show itself more strong. 

1st WOMAN. — This one is a bold woman and 
her voice too high pitched, and holds the word too 
long in the mouth. 

PRO. — A plotting, conniving, secret woman 
that, with fat Grosscrop, played her cuckoldry hus- 
band a most sotten trick which was to give him 
horns ere she gave him bed, and she is at it now 
to play him another, as you shall witness presently. 
O ! your over-fond husband now-a-days may well 
go to his bed of a night-time with a glittering bald 
noddle, to wake up in the morning with horns 
on it ! 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— O my poor brother ! My 
poor Feathers ! To think of him in prison so ! And 
his hair dipt, too, as they say it will be, that was 
ever my pride, and those vilely striped clothes that 
I've seen in pictures ! 

1st WOMAN. — What is her grief that she wrings 
her hands so and weeps? 

PRO. — Her brother is in jail — hemmed in — 
locked up, and must peep at the sun through the 
bars ! It is for him she does it. 

1st WOMAN. — So she says, but on what cause 
is he? 

PRO. — Why, for a burglary, fornication or bas- 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 31 

tardy committed upon a bank's moneys, or by 
whatever name these straddling men of law name 
the offense. 

2nd WOMAN.— A fornication! O good God! 
O it is indecent ! O we must leave this ! A forni- 
cation ! We must tell all to Rev. Smallfry ! Come, 
then! 

1st WOMAN. — I pity her no more that she 
weeps for such a brother. And he would not after 
marry the girl he wronged? He was not the man 
for that? 

PRO.— What girl was't? 

1st WOMAN.— Why, her he did it with! 

PRO. — O you mistake! He robbed a bank that 
he was cashier of, and for that they pinch him. 
There was no girl, and if there had been, he should 
not to jail for that, for every judge now will set 
him the example to it. His name is Feathers, and 
he robbed a bank, and you shall see here presently 
that this woman is in love with him, and will break 
jail to free him, and will fly with him, leaving her 
husband to do it, and will confess her wantonness 
with Grosscrop, and — 

2nd WOMAN.— O mercy! O God! 

1st WOMAN. — For shame! Is this to be en- 
acted here, sir? 

PRO. — Most sure it is, and all to the life, and — 

ist WOMAN. — ril not be witness to such shame ! 

That ril not! Let us out of this! Come, Martha! 



32 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

O this wicked world ! This Sodom ! This Gomor- 
rah ! Let us out of here ! 

2nd WOMAN.— And tell all to Rev. Smallfry, 
by my advice ! Let us tell all to him ! And these 
unhappy women should, too ! 

1st WOMAN. — I'll see what laws we have if 
such things can be done ! Let us out of this ! 

PRO. — No, no ! Do not leap down there into the 
pit so, for fear you light upon a bald head there, 
for bald heads ever hug the boards nearest. Do 
not jump so ! 

1st WOMAN.— Let us out of here ! You black- 
guard ! 

PRO.— O, that I will ! If you speak In that tone ! 
Come ladies ! Here you shall out ! 

2nd WOMAN.— We will tell Rev. Smallfryl 
We will tell him all ! 

(Exeunt Prologue and Women.) 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— It is horrible to think on! 
My poor brother ! It is horrible ! 

MRS. BEAKS. — No, but consider it more calm- 
ly. Good men and women have been a thousand 
times before in jail, to come out unscathed again 
and live useful and respected lives thereafter. And 
so may he. 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— O, the stain! The re- 
proach of it ! The stain that no wash can dis- 
place ! And all this racking of his name till every 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 33 

house is a hive disturbed, so buzzing and so busy 
are all tongues within in speaking ill of him ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— You should not heed such 
noises. 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— And for him ever after to 
be held in such opinion ! O it is horrible ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— No, but that were a little mat- 
ter! What is this thing opinion that any should 
be afraid of it? Consider it in this wise: The 
world's worst opinion is but opinion still and has 
no hurtful substance to it but as ourselves do lend 
it. 'Tis our too sensitive regard of it that loads its 
emptiness with lead to make a club to beat us. 
Let our ears be deaf to it, as our senses, too, and 
its power is lost. Feathers will out from these 
closed bars being innocent of the wrong they 
charge, and then those noisy tongues will clamor 
full as loud in praise of him as they do now in 
slander. 

INIRS. CRANEBILL.— O a thousand times I 
wish he had not seen that bank, nor heard, nor 
thought, nor dreamt of it, nor had been cashier of 
it in any sense, that we thought then so good a 
place and strived to get! He would not be in 
prison so at its unlucky failure and widows' and 
aged sick-folks' curses on him that lost their all 
in it. That he would not ! 

MRS. BEAKS. — It's most certain he would not 
had it been so. But, as I think, he did no wrong 
in it. 



34 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— You are sure he did not? 
O ! there is a grain of comfort still ! You're sure 
he did not? 

MRS. BEAKS.— More sure I am he did no 
wrong than that ever men will do him right on 
that he did. The blame rests all on Grosscrop, 
that powerful and unscrupulous man whose toys 
we all have been and are. 'Twas he that puffed 
the bauble up of this seeming goodly bank to 
make an outward show and punctured it again 
when it best served his ends to do it. 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— And my brother, one that 
would not harm a fly! What spite had he to do it? 
What spite, indeed, to such a harmless one? 

MRS. BEAKS.— No spite at all but Grosscrop's 
profit. These rich and soulless men hold neither 
spite nor mercy in their breasts, but will lift an- 
other up as quick as pluck him down again, when 
best it serves them to do either. 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— How could you, then, be 
friend to such a one? Yet now I'm glad you are 
his friend, that you may — 

MRS. BEAKS. — Call him no more my friend, 
for from this I renounce him openly, as I long 
have done in secret. Call him not my friend ! 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— But yet you will solicit 
him for my brother? You will do it, Anne? For 
old friendship's sake between us? And my poor 
brother held you always in such respect ! And 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 



35 



talked constantly of you, as now in his distress, 
I'm open to confess he did, and were you not a 
married lady, dearest Anne, I would here declare 
he was full half in love with you ! I would so, 
and know full well, that he admired you above 
all other women. You will speak with Grosscrop, 
then, for his release again? 

MRS. BEAKS.— We will devise what can be 
done in his behalf. I feel for him as 3''OU do, that 
he must smart under this injustice. 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— And God will bless you 
for it! (Knocking without). What rude sound is 
this? An officer! Another officer! 

MRS. BEAKS.— It is none. 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— O, I never now hear any 
noise but am dumb with fear of writs and pro- 
cesses, of warrants and arrests, since they pulled 
my brother from his bed by night, for it was so 
they came a-knocking. (More knocking). This 
well may be an officer! 

MRS. BEAKS. — It is no officer, but some slip- 
pery man of politics, most like, that comes in here 
to see my husband, who, with the rest, is laboring 
now in this same Grosscrop's behalf to make him 
senator or something to the like effect. 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— Grosscrop! 

MRS. BEAKS. — It needs no surprise that they 
pick him for it, for no sooner do these worldly men 
touch the gamut off of all the vices but they are 



36 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

picked for office, if they be but rich. (Still knock- 
ing.) These boisterous ones of late have overrun 
our house as it had been a ramping bar-room v^here 
ruffians congregate. Come with me, Florence. 
We will leave this place to them. My husband 
is within. These noisy sports are to his liking, not 

to mine. 

(Exeunt both.) 

(Enter Webfoot, bearing a parcel.) 

WEBFOOT.— Did I not hear voices? On my 
word, I heard voices I But no, there are none. 
(Knocks at the door.) Not a cat stirring in the 
whole house. They are from home; therefore, 
what's to do? I will look in the card if it has any 
direction to fit. A good steward should do all by 
the card. (Reads.) ''From Phillip Grosscrop to 
Baby Beaks." O ! it were a strange thing now, that 
my round master, stout Phillip Grosscrop, had 
made rich presents to Baby Beaks, and had Baby 
Beaks no young mamma by her. But she has one, 
and a pair of black eyes, therefore it is not strange 
for my master holds a confessed weakness to it. 
Well, I am in a thousand tangled webs what next 
thing to do in my commission, for the total of my 
rules of politeness do not tell me whether I should 
set down this parcel here where none are to re- 
ceive it, and a dainty note fixed to it, or lug it back 
to my fat dispatcher for further advisement. It 
were better set it down ! Yet there in the question 
of the note I have no learning that instructs me 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 



37 



what were a suitable one indited from a gross- 
bellied man, like my master, to a still sucking 
babe like her this goes to, and I know not how I 
should err in writing any sweetness to the mother 
who is young and handsome. I must back with 
it, then ; but in the doing it so I shall not satisfy 
either my master's business or my own inclining, 
for I have an ache to clap eyes on my plump little 
apple-cheeked Julia Bumpkins, who lives here and 
kills me with love of her. O, it is a fearful thing 
to be in love ! I'd as lief any malady in a Latin 
name as it, but that her dainty sweetness some- 
times requites me with an odd kiss or two. But 
here comes now this little troubler of my peaceful 
dreams! (Enter Julia.) This pretty nightmare! 
This full box of tarts and bon-bons ! 

JULIA. — O, it is only you, is it? 
WEBFOOT.— Only! Why only, then! 

JULIA. — What rough noise is this to raise the 
house with it? 

WEBFOOT.— Noise! Noise, indeed! I hear 
none but a woman's silly tongue ! 

JULIA. — What business brings you here? 

WEBFOOT.— None that I have with you, un- 
less to ask you if the lady of this house be home. 
My business lies with her and no servant's nose 
shall be stuck in it. 

JULIA. — What! And you will answer me sauc- 
ily? O, then you shall tell me what it is or never 



38 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

come again with my consent to see me ! That you 
shall not! 

WEBFOOT.— To see you? What's 10 see you? 
Who had a thought to see you? O what a glass 
is prime conceit, that, when our flattered eye peers 
through, lends to our little moon of self a greater 
largeness than have a hundred other suns, and of 
the tiny nook we stand in makes there the big cen- 
ter of the universe. Why, I'd never thought of 
you, that any such person had been ali\e today! 

JULIA. — What! And you did not think of me? 
You did not? 

WEBFOOT.— Before God, I did not. 

JULIA. — O, then, it's well enough if you'll not 
do it! I would not for the world you'd vex your 
empty head to do it ! But some there are, I know, 
will do it ! And need but hold their finger up and 
have them here to do it! 

WEBFOOT. — Some! What some can you? 
What shallow cock's pates? What stringy rad- 
ishes that would not sell a bunch the penny? What 
rejected fowls that begged in every market and no 
taker? What over-ripe berries that stink for want 
of picking? What — 

JULIA. — And you think I cannot? I will tell 
you ! There is big Mat Quail, that drives old 
Platter's cart! I cannot take two turns upon the 
street but his eye's after — 

WEBFOOT.— O he is a bag of beastly pud- 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 39 

ding! A porpoise-ribbed trunk! A walrus-flanked 
bull ! — that brings three hundred pounds to crush 
a wife against the tick ! You were a pretty mole 
to such a mountain. 

JULIA. — And young Ed Sage, the gardener's 
handsome boy, that my sister thinks a likely lad 
to— 

WEB FOOT. — To make adoption of were you 
keeper of an orphanage ! Why, he'd suck your 
milk all dry, he's such a calf ! And know no other 
use than suck it ! He is a true calf if ever one ! 

JULIA. — And there is Tom Sows, besides — 

WEBFOOT. — Tom? Tom's well named sows, 
for he's one indeed ! And wallows drunk in muddy 
pools at every turn his leant purse affords his 
belly it to drink ! Avoid this scummy sow, unless 
you'd have a litter of its breed. 

JULIA. — And Peter Float, I could well name, 
that took me often out before, and would again, 
but you stand in its way ! 

WEBFOOT.— And there's the needed boar that 
mates the other sow to make a pair with her ! It's 
not a piggie's little tail to choose between those 
two, which drinks and wallows most ! 

JULIA. — O it is your jealously that sets you 
to speaking so of my good friends ! And to hear 
your spitefulness, there never was but worthless 
man except yourself; yet, it's well you love your- 
self, for there's none other such a fool to do it ! 



40 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

You can go your single way, as I will mine here- 
after, and good riddance 'tis, to such a one ! 

WEBFOOT.— What! You would not drive me 
out? 

JULIA. — No, but whip you, rather, as you de- 
serve ! You should not so abuse a man ! For fear 
you should not ! 

WEBFOOT.— But I love you! Come! You 
would not scorn my tender love of you ! 

JULIA. — No, you're nothing to me! You shall 
not flatter me hereafter! It is at an end between 
us. 

WEBFOOT.— Then, am I a cobbler's poor and 
silent hammer, unless you be my little peg to make 
me sing! Come, little peg! Here your hammer is! 
The one's the other's compliment; you would not 
whip me out ! 

JULIA. — I am nothing to you ! That we think 
nothing of is nothing to us ! I'm nothing to you ! 

WEBFOOT. — Then I have nothing, and noth- 
ing would quicker have and slower part with than 
nothing, since you are it; for you are my good 
right hand and left one, too; you are my foot, my 
leg, my eye, tooth, head and every organ ; you are 
tny plum, my berry, my peach, my little pink 
cherry. (Voices within.) You are — 

JULIA. — Hush ! Hush ! They are coming now ! 
They must not hear you so ! 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 41 

WEBFOOT.— But I must tell what 'tis you are 
to me! I have a whole dictionary yet untouched! 

JULIA. — No more now! 

WEBFOOT.— But I must tell you! 

JULIA. — No, then, but when these go, come in 
at the kitchen and there tell me. 

WEBFOOT.— Yet, a kiss! You shall not stir 
but first give me a kiss, or, by force, I'll have it ! 

JULIA. — There it is, and no force ! Come in at 
the kitchen when you may. 

(Exit Julia.) 

WEBFOOT.— The kitchen! O what a noble 
word it is that smells of much and is much ! I am 
two parts already in this same kitchen, for my 
heart and belly run to it both — I know not which 
the faster — and can scarce wait my legs to fetch 
them thither decently. I will quick dispatch my 
business here and then I am off, heart, belly and all, 
to love and good victuals. O I scarce know which 
of the two merry rogues, whether Cupid, the lover, 
or his half brother, Dionysus, the prince of good 
victualers, holds him most in my liking; but it 
suits me well to touch elbows with them both to- 
gether, so that when Cupid tickles me into poesy 
Dionysus shall be by to soften my palate with good 
eat and better drink. (Enter Beaks and Walter 
Grosscrop.) But who are these? Spades and 
Clubs, and jacks both! It is an ill deal, sure, that 



42 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

turns these two knaves face upward together. I 
will stand apart a little. 

WALTER.— No, Beaks! Good Beaks! It is 
the very time to ask this loan of my father to me ! 
The very time of all times ! For since every action 
whatsoever has its season, what more seasonable 
season could be devised that I should ask my father 
money than that one when he is deep in politics to 
be named senator and so needs friends? He will 
need every friend's help to it, will he not? 

BEAKS.— O, truly! 

WALTER.— Well, then, will he need mine, too; 
but unless I have a little money of him now I will 
sure resolve myself into a bolting caucus to do 
him sore defeat. Tell him that, and if he would 
have me he must treat with me liberally. Tell 
him so ! 

BEAKS.— What! To make him laugh? But 
let another, not me, be your attorney here. 

WALTER.— No! No! Not at all, Beaks. You 
are the very man of all others to do this office be- 
tween me and my wrought father. You stand deep 
in his confidence, and he is beholden to you greatly 
for your faithful service in his thriving business. 
Get me this loan of him, then. Beaks ! Get me it ! 
He cannot deny you ! I never before was so dis- 
tressed for a little money! Get me this loan, then! 

BEAKS. — I may undertake it, but with no as- 
surance of success. 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 43 

WALTER. — Why, you are right arm to my 
father ! He surely cannot deny his good right arm ! 

BEAKS. — But you live so recklessly of late and 
are so violently given over to drink ! He declares 
himself fixed in it that you shall reform before he 
gives you more. 

WALTER. — I am sober now ! Dead sober ! 
And have been this fortnight ! You know it, Beaks ! 

BEAKS. — No; but my senses misgive me if it 
is so. 

WALTER. — O, then, believe it or not, as you 
will, Beaks, but it is truth ! I've not pulled a poor 
bottle's little stopper these two weeks, and will 
not again if this flint-hearted father but lets me 
this money. But if he will not, I shall not 
answer what misgoverned conduct may then 
befall me, and you should tell him so. Tell him I 
have undertaken my amendment, and add your 
own testimony that you saw me and was straight 
as a Mason's bob ! Tell him that ! 

BEAKS. — I fear I should do the truth some vio- 
lence so; and, to be bold, look now at your totter- 
ing gait, your watery eyes and nose of lobster 
redness, that all argue carousals not older than 
yesterday, or, as I believe, last night. 

WALTER.— These are but the effect of old 
times that new time will remedy again. O, were 
you any judge to good liquor you'd see I'm sober, 
for witness me that I can pace this line off, and 



44 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

no wavering, which is the hardest test a man in 
drink may be put to ! How's it done for a firm 
step? 

BEAKS.— Ha! Ha! O, rare! 

WALTER— Was't not a light step? 

BEAKS. — As the cautious cat's, that steals up 
on an oily mouse ! Rare indeed ! 

WALTER. — No, but in good earnest? 

BEAKS.— O excellent! Excellently done! The 
prim corporal, freshly advanced, doing a soldier's 
pace at a rustic fair, with country wenches' admir- 
ing eyes fixed on him, could not amble so. (Web- 
foot advances.) But here comes now your father's 
man. How goes't with you and with my good 
friend, your master? 

WEBFOOT. — I do well enough, but my mas- 
ter! O, he does bad, not to say villainously! 
BEAKS— You startle me! How so? 

WEBFOOT. — Why, I do as a rich man ought, 
for I am rich ; but my poor master he is beggarly 
poor and never will be but be poor! I marvel that 
old Lady Fortune could so unequally deal between 
even man and man as to give me my riches and him 
his poverty ! The good woman must need be blind 
to do it, which were kindlier said of her than to 
lay this uneven justice to her willfulness. 

BEAKS. — O, you bold rogue ! Your master is 
not poor, but rich, and you not rich, but poor. 
How do you say it's otherwise than this ? 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 



45 



WEBFOOT. — Yet I say I'm rich and he poor, 
or I mistake that man he is. 

BEAKS. — So you have said, but how? Come! 
Explain this cunning paradox that makes riches 
beggary and beggary rich. How is it so? 

WALTER. — Come ! Speak, now, you knave ! 

WEBFOOT.— I am content in that I have, 
though it be nothing ; therefore am I rich. But old 
Grosscrop is poor, is miserly poor, for all his 
lands that by other's sweat do yield him bounteous 
harvest, and for his income annual too, and pay- 
ments prompt at quarters, and his good stuffed 
boxes of forceful documents whereon groaning 
debtors set unsteady hands to let him suck super- 
fluous blood of them. For all of these he has, he 
still is poor, and I, with nothing, a richer man 
than he. 

BEAKS. — I see nothing in this. 

WALTER. — His song's burden is nothing. 

BEAKS. — Come again, you rogue! Crack this 
conundrum for us with the ponderous mallet of 
your wit and let us taste its meat that wears so 
thick a shell. Yet I suspect it is but shell at last, 
and no meat. How does this make him poor? 

WEBFOOT. — His unfed appetite will, for it is 
a country miller's hopper and no bottom to it, and 
though every passing cajrt spills 'in its twenty 
bags of golden wheat, still is it empty, for what can 



46 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

fill what has no bottom? And so his appetite for 
more has none. 

WALTER. — O this is bottomless humor. 
BEAKS.^ — Deep! Deep! And the timid sense 
scarce dare probe it down, lacking all bottom. 

WALTER.' — Therefore it surpasses understand- 
ing! 

WEBFOOT.— My humble need is but a violet's 
tiny cup, compared to his, which is a brewer's cum- 
brous vat — 

WALTER.— There ! There ! He is to it again. 

WEBFOOT.— And so this little cup of mine, 
with one poor drop in it, owns a greater fullness 
than does his yawning vat with gallons. For what 
can riches do but fill our needs up, and when our 
needs are full what further need have we of riches?* 
I then with modest wants am rich, and he with 
much but poor, egged on by riotous greed. 

BEAKS. — Greed! Riotous greed! And you 
would have us laugh at that? You rosfue? You 
rascally rogue! I'd see you whipped instead for 
this gross slander spoken upon a worthy man. 
What! And in the presence of his son as well! 
How dare you say it to our faces here — to me, 
that am his friend, and to this gentleman, that is 
his son? You shall answer to this slander! 

WEBFOOT.— I will answer it! And you call 
it slander; I will call it truth! And so you're 
answered! And so I'll set my good plea up over 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 



47 



an attorney's cunning signature, that none shall 
guess it's any man's name ! And so I'll mulct you 
in your own action ! 

BEAKS.— Mulct me? How mulct me? 

WEBFOOT. — For the cost of it, being brought 
without cause. I was clerk once to a hunger- 
starven lawyer, and caught up some of the dregs of 
law, which were my only payment, for though he 
paid me his whole income, he paid me nothing, 
for it was nothing. 

BEAKS. — O you oily-skinned knave! You slip- 
pery knave ! We do not sue such worthless ones at 
law, but on their over-tender backs levy stinging 
reprisal for the injury, and here is his son that will 
on yours for speaking of his father so. Come, 
Walter, rub me this ass's ears, that spreads the seed 
of such an ill report upon your father! (Walter 
beats him). 

WEBFOOT.— O, then I take all back! I meant 
nothing, but all in good humor ! I take all back ! 

BEAKS.— Cuff him, now! 

WALTER.— No! No! Let him go. Beaks! 

WEBFOOT. — O, gentlemen ! I had no mean- 
ing! O! 

WALTER.— Let him go! I'll hold my punish- 
ment of him off until my father lets me this loan. 
(Aside). Which I've misgivings he'll not do, and 
should he not, this saucy fool shall have my pardon 



48 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

then, and I will add my voice to his, to say worse 
things upon my father and true ones, too ! 

WEBFOOT.— O, sir! 

BEAKS. — Go then, you rascal ! Go, for your loud 
roaring! But, bear't in mind, such noisy bellow- 
ing will not serve another like offense. 

WEBFOOT.— Offense! Who said offense? 

BEAKS. — You speak too much. What errand 
brings you here from him? 

WEBFOOT. — A thankless one, it seems, which 
is the delivery of this parcel to your wife (going), 
but since you will not suffer me — 

BEAKS.— To Mrs Beaks? Come back, fool! 
And you would bear it off and nothing said? 

WEBFOOT. — You said too much was said. 

BEAKS. — Too much of nothing"! What parcel 
is it? 

WEBFOOT.— This one. 

BEAKS. — You huffy rogue! What one? 

WEBFOOT.— I know nothing but what's here 
written. Come, you have better schooling than I ; 
read it, then. 

BEAKS.— O, it is another little gift of his ! He 
is far too generous to his friends. 

WALTER.— O that I were his friend and not 
his son ! That I might so accuse him ! 

BEAKS. — A little patience, Walter! He is gen- 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 49 

erous and will be yet to you. I know him to be 
generous. 

WEBFOOT.— You stole that word of my vocab- 
ulary. I called him that. 

BEAKS. — Peace ! Peace ! Poor rattle-brain ! 
Take the package up again and bear it to my wife. 
Come, follow me. 

(Exeunt Beaks and Webfoot.) 

WALTER.— ^'Another little gift," he said! An- 
other and yet another following, like the limitless 
procession viewed of images cast by two oppos- 
ing mirrors. O what a rocky-bosomed and most 
unnatural father is he, that without remorse, do 
force me, his true begotten and only son, to dwell 
in pinching beggary, while he makes bountiful 
gifts out of my true inheritance to his hired man's 
family, and no excuse for it, but that he says I live 
a licentious and drunken life ! It is a false adage, 
then, that blood runs thicker than water, for 
here is clotted water that gives this ancient saw 
the lie and is hasty pudding to this thin blood of 
mine ; and the Beaks may have presents and plenty 
of my father's givings, whilst I live upon the bor- 
rowing charity of begrudging friends, who would 
rather see Beelzebub than me, that am always 
begging a loan of them, to be repaid tomorrow. 
But there is cause for it, and one I yet may bend 
to my advantage. This Mrs. Beaks was formerly 
my father's tender ward, and I have not borne 



50 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

my eyes so uselessly but that I saw he held unlaw- 
ful traffic with her, and in the emergency of their 
secret dalliance that overtook them both he pro- 
cured her marriage to this numbskull, Beaks, who 
serves him now as the grateful dog, the master 
that practiced a foul deceit on it. If this same 
baby Beaks is not half sister to me and full daugh- 
ter in blood to my father, then there is no dishon- 
esty in the world, and lecherous men and women 
are far more virtuous than life-mating eagles that 
dwell apart on lonesome mountains to brood on 
continent forbearance. But it is so. And my brain 
must prove a barren and unfruitful brain if it 
cannot play the female to this masculine knowl- 
edge to beget with it a sack of golden twenties 
for my use. I'll try what it can! But here my 
father's puppet comes again. 

(Re-enter Beaks.) 

BEAKS. — O you should have seen it, Walter! 
The most exquisite instrument, with ivory enam- 
elled keys and finger-boards set off with pure gold ! 
It is fitted with nine jewels of what stones I can- 
not yet make out, a pretty device worked of true 
pearls. You should see it. 

WALTER.— No! No! Unless the sight of it 
could fill up empty pockets, but that it cannot. I 
am in desperate fortune for a few poor dollars. I 
know not what rash step I may be forced to unless 
you prevail with my father. I am a stranded fish 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 51 

on burning sands that waits this cooling shower 
to float him up again. If you regard me, Beaks, 
study a fair speech to him. 

BEAKS. — You may trust me to plead with him 
well in your behalf. 

WALTER. — But let it be quick dispatched. I am 
a tethered lamb waiting the butcher's steel or his 
deliverance, so impatient am I, until I learn the 
issue of this thing. How soon will it be? 

BEAKS. — Tomorrow morning at the farthest. 

WALTER.— It is a year till then, for in the 
interim my impatient fingers must close on emp- 
ty palms, unless, perchance, Beaks, good Beaks, 
you have on you a petty coin, or two or three, you 
could toss me off in way of loan to help plodding 
time to a better pace. Cheerfully, Beaks ! I'll re- 
pay it again and a Jew's interest! Come, lad! 
No haggling! 

BEAKS. — Here is a trifle; not much, but yet a 
trifle. 

WALTER.— A hundred thousand homely 
thanks ! The long night in this loses his length by 
a good one-half. And so ton sois until tomorrow. 

(Exit Walter.) 

BEAKS. — Bon soz's, indeed! He holds these 
beastly words of his French mistress. I'd hazard 
now he's off to entertain that sly adventuress, who 
leechlike sucks a riotous livelihood of him and a 
dozen other youthful bloods to wealthy fathers. 



52 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

What a wreck has he grown of late ! What a 
wreck of promised manhood that, rightly poised, 
should prove his father's stick to lean on, but is, 
instead, a pricking thorn to him. He bids me tell 
his father he's amending, but it's not true, nor 
would I be the fool to do it were it true, for so 
it is that these same prodigal blasts that blow his 
unsteered bark from out his father's sheltering 
harbor do gently waft mine more securely into it. 
Why it so fares with me through his profitable 
father that I, Avho three short years ago drank 
beverage distilled of roasted corn and ate porridge 
of my own cooking am now in the way of riches, 
and Grosscrop made me this man I am from that 
beginning. And, better than these, I have, I see 
now in the horizon, and all through Grosscrop. 
O, it is a darling old world, if it be but right taken, 
which is to work all profitably. Yet v:hen I was 
poor I saw not this, and railed often at good Lady 
Fortune, who dealt harshly by me ; therefore do I 
argue that poor men a^e blinded as I Vvas, and 
therefore, again, that only a rich man shall be phil- 
osopher to me hereaftei, for I would not call physi- 
cian to cure me who groaned under the like malady 
himself. It is a darling world. 

(Enter Mrs. Beaks.) 

BEAKS. — What! And she wears scowls still? 

MRS. BEAKS.— Let us back with this toy to 
Grosscrop. We are already too much bound to 
him to receive it at his hand. 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 53 

Beaks. — To receive it? 

MRS. BEAKS.— It or any other thing of him 
with my consent we shall not further. 

BEAKS. — And you would slap him so in the face 
by such a gross discourtesy? That holds us in his 
debt for favors shown? 

MRS. BEAKS.— Our debt to him will not grow- 
less by further plunging into it. 

BEAKS. — Why of late is this unreasoning dis- 
like of him? You held him once in good esteem, 
received his favors, too, and counseled me how best 
to win them. Yet now of late you scarce can bear 
the mention of his name without a show of fury ! 

MRS.BEAKS.— We live too much by this man's 
bounty. 

BEAKS. — You wrong our friend! You wrong 
good Grosscrop greatly! Come, be fair to do hmi 
justice now. 

MRS. BEAKS.— Justice! O did he get but sim- 
ple justice I fear he should be scourged, and I with 
him, and you with both of us ! 

BEAKS. — You should not speak so of our friend. 

MRS. BEAKS. — Your friend, but mine no 

longer. 

BEAKS. — You are ungrateful, saying it! You 
forget he reared you up from the fricfndless, cr- 
phaned girl you were, upon your father's death. 
and all at his proper charge, not touching the lit- 



54 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 



tie sum your father left, but turned it to you at 
the end. 

MRS. BEAKS.— Yet, I do not thank him, nor 
owe him thanks. 

BEAKS. — Ungrateful woman ! 
MRS. BEAKS.— I owe him none. 

BEAKS. — I'll not be party to your perverse 
humor, but frankly will confess how much Vm 
bound to him and show my thanks. There is no 
thing that to me belongs, as money, property, posi- 
tion, or whatever else I have that men strive most 
to get, but to him I owe it, as you do also. 

MRS. BEAKS. — If money were all, it's true you 
owe him all. 

BEAKS. — And influence, too, to make me sought 
and fix me in the world's respect. Why, it has so 
prospered with me of late that those dressy cox- 
combs that before had no enlarging glass to see 
my smallness in, now spy my greater bigness across 
the street's full width, and duck and nod their 
heads familiarly; for they hold me now the con- 
fident man to him in whose debt they lie ; such 
great respect the world holds money in. 

MRS. BEAKS.— O, but did they more respect 
the means whereby it's won, this man had stood in 
ill respect for winning his. 

BEAKS. — How has he won it? 

MRS. BEAKS.— Very illy. 

BEAKS.— How illy? 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 



55 



MRS. BEAKS. — Let me ask you, rather. Your 
deeper knowledge of his hidden ways should teach 
you it better than my answer can. You know full 
well by what indirect and crooked paths he climbed 
unto his present fortune. 

BEAKS. — I do not know, nor do you, nor 
anyone. This is the common error of shallow 
minds. In the affairs of business in the bustling 
world it is not fit that men should strain themselves 
to scrupulous niceties to fix the balance by a hair, 
which would answer nothing but to defeat the very 
ends they sought and leave them easy prey to 
such as used more worldly argument. Successful 
man must be stirring as the stirring age is, fight 
fire with fire, cheat guile by guile, entrap the trap- 
per in the lurking snare, and delve below the load- 
ed mine to blow it at the clouds. It is a choice be- 
tween this course and failure in the world. So 
only Grosscrop did. 

MRS. BEAKS.— O words, words! nothing but 
words ! There is no vice of man's but he will frame 
words to acquit him of ! So may he who robs young 
Feathers now of his good name and liberty too on 
pretense of a wrong himself committed. 

BEAKS.— That Grosscrop did? 

MRS. BEAKS.— He if anyone. 

BEAKS — O and you will blame him still that 
young Feathers is in jail ! Well, if young Feathers 
had been old Feathers instead, and dry with age, 



56 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

ache and ugliness, he might rot in jail and no 
woman's pity on him wasted ; but for he is young, 
wears curled and matter locks, gazes with attentive 
eyes, has round proportions and a winning voice, 
the women all, whose judgments are ever warped 
by fair or ugly looks to likes or dislikes, will now 
cry out upon the law that puts these bars before 
him. But it's well the law is blind to prettiness or 
ill-favor, measuring its justice out to both alike. 
It's well it's blind. 

MRS. BEAKS.— I think indeed the law is blind. 

(Enter Rev. Pinkwort and Kate Grosscrop.) 

PINKWORT.— Here is a picture indeed! If I 
were but painter now to paint it ! A home's content- 
ment ! I'll warrant you were lovemaking ! A sort 
of blushing guilt in you both tells me you were love- 
making ! It were rude in us to interrupt you so ! 
But a rude entrance is excused to see this picture 
unawares ! 

BEAKS. — You are welcome in and glad to see 
you. 

PINKWORT.— O wedded bliss! O the delight 
of it ! Denied to me ! Denied all bachelors ! I never 
witness it but to fall to thinking how much are 
bachelors denied ! Your bachelor peers only 
through the chinks but never to touch or taste ! Is't 
not so, Miss Kate? Is't not, Kate? 

KATE. — I would not venture, but a home with 
love in it 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 



57 



PINKWORT.— A pity on all bachelors ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— O do not lament so! Your turn 
shall yet come, for it's said, every dog has his day, 
and why not you yours? 

PINKWORT.— A witty answer! ''Every dog," 
ha ! ha ! I would I'd your wit, Mrs. Beaks ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— And I yours. 

PINKWORT.— Why would you mine? 

MRS. BEAKS. — For if so happen I should lose it, 
as they say women are given to the losing of their 
wits, I should still be but little the loser. 

BEAKS. — O she is in humor now and will give 
you this play without end ! Do not hear her. 

PINKWORT.— I think she be in humor! But 
it's no matter ! A merry nature ! A nature merry 
par excellence and vede mecum too as I believe ! 
On my honor it is so ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— A dainty oath! ''On my honor"! 
But what, if it should not be true you said, and you 
should to hell for false swearing. Is it not a rash 
risk? And for a pulpit-kindler, too, of pygmy hell- 
fires to affright imagining women? How shall you 
escape damnation in one of these? 

PINKWORT.— It is no oath! A minister as I 
am should swear on nothing! 

MRS. BEAKS. — So you do, since you do it only 
on your honor. 



58 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

PINKWORT.— He is enjoined of it ! He should 
not! 

MRS. BEAKS.— Well! Well! I give you your 
acquittance. How goes all with you, Kate? 

KATE. — So busy! So very busy, of late, to ar- 
range our church party fixed for Wednesday night. 
It leaves me no time. You shall not fail to be to 
it or we'll not forgive you so ! 

PINKWORT.— That you must not, Mrs. Beaks ! 
If you love our little church in its need you must 
not ! If you would keep one brick of it on another, 
you must not! For we are sore pressed for every 
dollar ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— One brick on another? What! 
is the church then fallen to this plight, that its life 
hangs now upon the gorging down of creams, and 
tarts and bon-bons which, swallowed, He like lead 
in distressful bowels, driving up poisonous vapors 
to the brain, there to beget unwholesome fantasies 
and wicked dreams? Does its toppling foundation 
depend so that formerly was built on rock? 

PINKWORT.— You bend the word from its par- 
ticular intent! You do it! The word church, as 
spoke, has double meaning to it, which resolved 
may be rendered in two heads, so — as first, the 
church invisible, videlicit — the church spiritual, 
videlicit again, the doctrine. This it is we say is 
built upon the rock. And for a second meaning — 

MRS. BEAKS.— No, but let me add there my 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 59 

videlicit too, before you depart from it; then I 
would say, videlicit — wind chiefly, which is the last 
element of all this doctrine, may be divided to, and 
there at last it will ever end — in wind — nothing but 
wind at last. Yet no matter; go on with the sec- 
ond, for I see you are bursting to deliver yourself. 
What is the second? 

PINKWORT. — And secondly, it is taken to mean 
for a second meaning, the church proper, namely, 
the house, namely, the stones, bricks, boards, iron 
or whatever else 'tis made of, and this material part 
of it takes money, for which we cannot be but 
beholden to our friends, and so I divide the word. 

MRS. BEAKS. — As God lives there is no splitter 
of atomies to do it half so cleverly as your preacher 
can ! He will take you for text a few dry words 
compounded of nothing, and this nothing he will 
divide into twenty different heads, each composed 
of nothing, and of these twenty nothings, resolved 
from one, he will discourse learnedly for above two 
hours, and yawns, and gapes, and snoring of his 
listeners, will deter him nothing. It is truly mar- 
velous ! But where is this party to be? 

PINKWORT.— Where should it be, but at Gross- 
crop's? There is a God-fearing man, that gives 
us his lawn for it, which will be decked liandsomely 
out in lanterns of Japan and tasteful colorings ! 
You shall be there, Mrs. Beaks ! Your wit shall too, 
to add its spice ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— It will if I will, for it is too 



6o OUR NEW HERALDRY 

young a wit to travel unaccompanied, and to go 
without any would be too much after the fashion 
of this time. 

PINKWORT. — There you may air it, and a hun- 
dred as witty ones to take up the coup and fling 
back as good an answer ! A good word there will 
beget a hundred others full as good ! I'll warrant 
it will ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— How indecent will the talk be 
then! 

PINKWORT.— Indecent? God save us! Inde- 
cent? 

MRS. BEAKS.— That one word shall beget a 
hundred! That one poor word shall come littered 
home by a hundred bred on it! Did you not say 
lanterns? 

KATE. — O we shall have lanterns and plenty! 
And I ran my feet of¥ yesterday to hunt them, for 
Pinkwort was too busy to undertake ! 

MRS. BEAKS. — Most like his business was of a 
kind better done in the dark than by lanterns. I'll 
warrant now it was ! if he dares to speak. 

PINKWORT.— God forbid! If you challenge 
me to it ril tell what 'twas. I labored then in a 
good cause — a Christian cause — which is the hin- 
dering all newsboys the selling papers of Sunday. 
It is a task I set myself to do, and will do it at any 
cost, as you shall see ! I too well know what vice 
this is, what sin flows from it, what immorality and 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 6i 

neglect, too, of good mother church, and Christian 
duty, and want of reverence, veneration, worship, 
piety, respect of God, and what vanity, worldhness, 
wicked desire, chafif and wild oats, venal sin, cor- 
rupt ends, false gods, deceit, hatred, anger, spite ! 
I know it well, and have framed my good petition 
up, setting out all my heads and paragraphs with 
foot-notes on the pages. You shall see it, Peaks, 
and subscribe to it, too ! There's no good citizen 
but will ! I'll not rest until it be enacted, not abate 
one line of it ! And so shall we raise up fallen vir- 
tue from the ground ! O it's beautiful to contem- 
plate what 'twould be and this enacted ! 

BEAKS. — It is a good work! You shall have my 
name to it. 

MRS. BEAKS. — So shall you not have mine. 

PINKWORT.— Go your ways, Mrs. Beaks ! Hu- 
morous Mrs. Beaks ! Ha ! ha ! I'll no more of 
you ! Go your way for a humorous woman ! 

(Exeunt Rev. Pinkwort and Kate.) 

MRS. BEAKS. — There is a sanctified humbug 
that no chary petticoat should trust to save within 
call. He is honey-combed and honey-sweet with 
pious pretensions, yet devours each woman with a 
greedy look. I wonder that Kate can stomach him 
to go in his company so ! O it were well if virgin 
Durity were endowed as magnet needles ara that 
detect unseen gross metal's presence. So should a 
virtuous girl a dishonest man in whatever clothing. 



62 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

BEAKS. — Yet I think your young girl is already 
too much like this disobedient or obedient needle, 
and she will ever turn to dishonest man as the 
needle does to hidden metal, leaving her fixed pole 
to do it ; for what is fair advice, good counsel, train- 
ing, and her parents' watchful care, but the guiding 
pole to her? And these she will leave for him. 

MRS. BEAKS. — It shocks me strangely to see 
Kate keep his company. 

BEAKS. — If I may judge, it will be a match 
between him and Kate. 

MRS. BEAKS.— A match? How so a match? 

BEAKS.— Why, I think he'll marry her. 

MRS. BEAKS.— And his wife in the south still 
living that he's parted from? And no divorce, 
either? Yet he named himself bachelor but now. 
I was on the very point of speaking of his wife as 
he did it. 

BEAKS. — But Kate knows nothing of it, nor do 
any of his church folk save Mrs. Grosscrop. And 
as for divorce, he may well get one of her, and is 
about it now, as I believe. 

MRS. BEAKS.— O did I suspect she dreamt of 
it, that she could fancy tethering her innocency out 
to this thorny bush to feed on rankness, I would 
put a little worm into her tender ear whose uncom- 
fortable wriggling there would wean her from it. 
Yet the doing it so might send her sicker to her 
bed than filthy typhus could. But sure she has 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 63 

no mind to him! And her stepmother, too! It 
is too unnatural and strained a thing! 

(Enter Julia.) 

JULIA. — Dinner is waiting and has been this 
while. 

MRS. BEAKS.— We will come at once. (Exit 
Julia.) And you think he thinks to marry her? 

BEAKS.— Most like he'll marry her. But 
whether he marries her or marries her not, is no 
affair of ours. Let me teach you rather to be fair 
with Grosscrop. There our interest lies. Let every 
man have justice. 

MRS. BEAKS. — O were I his dearest foe my 
prayer should be that he should have it! 

(Exeunt both.) 



sce:n^e u 



OFFICE OF THE DAILY BREAKWIND 

(Wattles and a Boy at Work.) 
WATTLES. — What is't you say he said of me? 
BOY. — That you are raving stark-mad with this 
latest infectious lunacy of prize-fighting and fisti- 
cuffs; that you — 



64 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

WATTLES.— O if that were all I have company 
in it ! There's no church-fair a success now-a-days 
without a set-to put down as cardinal to all else 
upon the bill. Even the ladies to it at chambers 
that are scarce bold enough to exhibit in public, but 
next year they will amend that and will out in the 
open for spectators to see them. I have company 
in it. 

BOY. — He said that your little brain would not 
measure the tenth fraction of a gill ; that were the 
water on it drawn off, your head would have no 
more bigness than a dried pea ; he said, too, that 
there was but one cure for you, and named himself 
physician to administer it. 

WATTLES.— What cure? Did he mention no 
particular cure? 

BOY. — To knock your scanty brams out, as he 
said, and swore he would do it, too, if you but 
crossed his path. 

WATTLES. — And he knows of my position 
here? He knows me to be sporting editor to the 
Daily Breakwind? He knows that? 

BOY. — That he does, but said 'twas no matter 
an you were twenty times its sporting editor ; he 
said they may well search out a new one unless 
dead men can write, for he put you down as good 
as dead already. 

WATTLES.— O then let him look before he takes 
this leap into the sea; let him hatch his chickens 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 65 

ere he counts them. Let him bear't in mind that 
an ounce of skill is worth a pound of boar's brawn ; 
that there is more in good blood than in swollen 
muscles, and more in wit than in grit. He may well 
find me a good handful, and armful too, with a belly- 
full yet to come. I do not fear him, nor any man, 
though he outweigh me two points to one, and I 
lay all to blood, for there is a strong fighting vein 
of it in our family. There's our old governor, my 
father ! He's a sprightly cock in drink, for an old 
one ! You'd ought to see him in drink once and 
hear him ! You'd ought to put a drink or two into 
him, of old gin, and sit by and take all in ! Gad ! 
He'll tell you of such madness in his youth as I 
never see, nor any of these quiet days ! He was 
water-carrier in his day to three several ring-sides 
and held sponge and alum to your best man of 
them all. He was a rare one in his time, and if I 
have a smack of it about me I came naturally by it. 

(Enter Quillet and several laboring men.) 

QUILLET. — I speak it plainly, gentlemen! 
Elect Grosscrop if you will ! Yes, go on ! Elect a 
man of his villainy, of his oppression ! Elect him 
I say, but remember if you do it, I swear never to 
shove good pen or pencil more in distressed labor's 
behalf. I take an oath to it, and there are those 
amongst you that know best whether I swear oaths 
to break them. Elect him if you will, then ! 

1st LABORER.— We have no thought to. Quillet. 



66 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

ALL. — Down with Grosscrop! 

QUILLET.— Gad, and I speak plain! Had I 
been the less plain spoken I had been the better 
fixed for it today. But no matter for that. I say 
to all her present and will cry it from the house- 
tops — damn me that man that votes for Grosscrop ! 
Damn him, I say, and stand to it! 

ALL.— Bravo Quillet! Bravo! 

QUILLET. — Let them put up the horned devil 
and vote for him ! Let them put up Pluto, prince 
of burning sulphur, or Lucifer, his lieutenant, or 
Satan, heir apparent of hell, or Mulciber, the sooty 
blacksmith of it, or whatever else is fouler or falser 
than these ! As well do it as to put Grosscrop up. 
And labor will do it, then labor and I are at cross- 
roads, and I go mine alone hereafter ! 

ist LABORER.— We'll stand to you. Quillet! 

ALL. — Hurrah for Quillet! Down with Gross- 
crop! 

QUILLET. — A pretty reward to me! A pretty 
reward to one that filled the enemy's flank with 
grape and canister these seven year! Yet had I 
been bribe-taker — as had chance a hundred thousand 
times, everyone to make a man rich, but spat on 
them — had I been bribe-taker to sell out labor to 
the devil at auction, they could not so treat me! 
And you will elect Grosscrop you may cut my lines 
loose of you ! 

ALL. — There's a man ! Hurrah for Quillet ! 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 67 

1st LABORER.— Let's tell you what's decided! 
Let's tell you! 

QUILLET. — I've eaten my humble pie before in 
sweat, and can do it again. I will stand to light 
through there's none else will. While I live by 
food it shall be honest food. 

ALL.— Honest Quillet! Good Quillet! 

ist LABORER. — If you will let me speak, Quil- 
let! Our labor union by unanimous dissent entrusts 
its cause to the Daily Breakwind and its right hon- 
orable editor, to do in the election to such defect 
as it may be advised. 

ALL.— Hurrah for the Breakwind ! 'Rah ! 'Rah ! 

1st LABORER.— We resoluted to the def-ct of 
this and will stand to it. Howsomever the Break- 
wind do advise, so do every delegate's ballad go — 

A VOICE. — Ballot, you mean, numbskull! 

1st LABORER.— And had he ten ballads it would 
go ! And the respect of which is that the Breakwind 
is a great reform paper and a friend to labor. 

QUILLET. — If 'tis so I thank you, gentlemen. 

1st LABORER. — It is so, and we thank you in- 
stead. Though what you said now dj gall us 
some, yet we know it's from honesty you said it, 
and honesty be good wares to deal in. I had rather 
that bold honesty slap me in the beard to set me 
right than that sly deceit kiss me on the che^k to 
lead me wrong. 



68 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

QUILLET. — It is indeed from honesty I spe^k, 
and that I love you laboring men as I hate the 
rich. 

I St LABORER. — We know it well, and you shall 
see there have been others in their time worse in- 
grates than we'll prove to you. 

2nd LABORER. — O it were different thirty year 
ago when I were a boy ! It were different then ! The 
lads then would not 'ave it ! Natt Little would not 
'ave it ! No, nor Simon Burrs that led the salt-hogs 
strike ! There were a lad that would not ! 

ALL. — Down with Grosscrop ! Hurrah for Quil- 
let ! 

(Exeunt Laborers.) 

QUILLET. — How easy 'tis to lead by the nose a 
chafing bull, knowing the trick of it ! Here are these 
dull sweaters, these pitiful fools! Why, there's no 
industry thrives upon their ignorance but mouthing 
it loudly, and lying, and sonorous-voiced bragging, 
yoked in with such skimmings and dress of s^'ckish 
flattery as would put plain-dealing intelligence 
straight to a qualm to rid his stomach of. If any- 
one would get their good opinion and hold it, he 
must need do it; he must need tell them that all 
men whatsoever who lived before them in the world 
are but apes and monkeys compared to such as 
they; he must tell them, too, that there's no gen- 
tility but goes abroad in a hickory shirt and cor- 
duroys; that there's no virtue or admirable quality 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 69 

in man but dwells in a smutty, begrimed and be- 
whiskered face, furrowed down with rivulets of 
tobacco spittal, and that the escutcheon of all the 
nobleness in the world is a wheel-barrow and hob- 
nails. And all of this in the name of truth, but in 
its name only, for truth itself is an unmixing ele- 
ment with their gross compound and will not abide 
in it. As well weld steel to copper, that part again 
at the last blow, as them to truth. They will have 
none of it but in name, nor of him that speaks it. 
They will starve out any truth-speaker that goes 
amongst them, if they do not the sooner cut him 
off with violence. O I had rather take my dwell- 
ing up in a gopher's burrow to crack nuts the win- 
ter through than to live on such meagerness as 
could be picked off these by telling truth to them, 
and therefore, I feed them of that dish they like 
best and thrive on. It serves me now to fan them 
to a frenzy to curb in Grosscrop's spreading ambi- 
tion. He owes me no good will for the many 
thrusts I gave him, and I account his gain my loss, 
for it is in politics as with double buckets in a well, 
when one goes up another must down. (To Wat- 
tles) Did Playfair yet come in? 

WATTLES.— No one o' that name. 

QUILLET.— (To the Boy) And you told him I 
was in haste? 

BOY. — Yes, and said would come impromptu. 
WATTLES. — Promptly, you mean, stupid! 



70 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

You'll not master our rules to sport till first those 
of grammar, and you should heed it. Gad, here is 
a pretty thing! a rare pretty thing, of feather- 
weights, that fit for an hour and above, and the 
two lads, either not above seventeen, borne away 
in stretchers at the close — a right pretty thing — 
with faces and clothing smeared and bespattered 
with blood — gad, to have seen it — and the per- 
plexed referee could not but pronounce it draw, so 
clever and so plucky were both ! A week's salary 
to a-been there. It is good matter here for two 
columns, with double headers at the top to tickle the 
eyes of all true sports. Here is my good day's work 
to put muscles, pipes, vessels, blood and motion into 
this skeleton to make a thing of life of it ! Come, 
my spelling dictionary and my sportsman's gloss- 
ary ! Here is a task that fits me. 

(Enter Playfair.) 

PLAYFAIR.— I am late? 

QUILLET.— A little lag of the time, but no 
matter. 

WATTLES.— Come, boy! Let's to the type- 
writer, and there you'll have music to play, for 
there we shall beat out notes and quarter notes, 
quavers and semi-quavers, crescendoes and high 
trebles, of right and left flukes, of cuffs and clinches, 
of break-aways and retreats to corners, of punches, 
knock-outs and jabs landed, with other merry music 
of the kind. Come, boy! 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 71 

(Exeunt Wattles and Boy.) 

PLAYFAIR. — A creditor stopped me on the way 
or I had been here the sooner. 1 am always dashed 
a little to be dunned for a debt, and this one was 
importunate, for I had no sops to throw him. 

QUILLET. — And you will not write me the 
matter off so against Grosscrop as I proposed and 
lend me your name's good testimony to it? It will 
serve me pat to have your name to it. 

PLAYFAIR. — No more than in the way I said. 

QUILLET. — O it is a milk-and-water way, but 
do it so nevertheless, since you will not do it other- 
wise, since conscience forbids you. Conscience, in- 
deed ! I'd as lief a millstone to my neck in the water 
as to live in this worldly world with a conscience 
like yours for companion to prick me from my own 
interests. It is a burdensome, quarrelsome and un- 
agreeable conscience, and I look to it yet to be your 
death. Why, you're no sooner quartered at a plen- 
tiful board and dainty victuals by than comes this 
Torqemada, this arch inquisitor, your busy, prying 
conscience, and elbows you from the seat, albeit 
your sunken, lean flanks quarrel with each other at 
close range for lack of a good meal to hold them 
further apart. And you will heed this conscience 
and refuse to touch me off Grosscrop .1 little with 
your pen? 

PLAYFAIR. — I cannot say more ill of him than 
I know for truth, but can show him to blame that 



72 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

young Feathers is locked up and show wherein. So 
much you are welcome to. 

QUILLET. — And you could add nothing in to 
blacken this a little? You could build in no cun- 
ning surmises, guesses, or innuendoes, suppositions 
or conclusions, to set tongues wagging? You could 
do nothing so? 

PLAYFAIR.— No. 

QUILLET. — And yet you know by what hun- 
dred and odd devices and tricks of wit he undid the 
state of more lands than the swift swallow on the 
wing could in, a day bound in? 

PLAYFAIR. — I've heard it so rumored. 

QUILLET. — And that by bribes and shady plots 
on pretense of the general good, he achieved the 
binding charter and license of the law to entrench 
himself upon the public water-ways and levy tribute 
of all users as a sovereign might? You know all 
this and, knowing it, will still hold scruples with 
what poisoned arrow to sting this common enemy 
of man that reaches out now for further power? 
But no matter! Since you will do no more, let 
that you do be in haste done. 

PLAYFAIR.— Tomorrow. 

QUILLET. — It will answer. O there is but one 
use your over honest man may be put to, and that 
but seldom. His testimony will pass current for 
truth when truth serves, for though men despise 
him, yet will they believe him, but he flies egregi- 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 



73 



ously against the wind to do it, for the world's 
wind is counter to all honesty, and who spits 
against its boisterous blast spits but in his own face. 
I would I could win you to some rational philoso- 
phy, to teach you selfishness rather than this too 
much honesty. You are in sore need of it. 

PLAYFAIR. — So do I wish I never may be pu- 
pil to you for such a learning. 

QUILLET. — There is no trade thrives now m the 
busy world by honesty, but only by the show of it. 
What poorer commendment can you make your 
friend to win commission for him than to say, 
"poor devil, he is honest"? Who will employ him 
so in a thing of weight? Your very needle women 
and rubbers at wash-boards can foresee that such 
a one must fall into a thousand wily traps that 
cunningness might cope with. 

PLAYFAIR. — It is a poor garment for wear that 
will not withstand both wet and dry, but your phi- 
losophy will not. If honesty's not good and held 
in the world's respect, why then do you profess 
it publicly, as I've heard you often do? And if 
dishonesty's esteemed, why then do men deny they 
have it and defend themselves against the charge 
of it? 

QUILLET.— O it is the fashion of the time to 
profess but not to do, and let no wise man mistake 
the one for the other. Profession was twin-brother 
once to performance, but now they are of different 



74 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 



kindred and hold no fellowship. We no longer 
have the ten commandments but one only — Put 
money in thy purse — and who does not keep this 
one, keeps the ten others in vain. There is no vir- 
tue now but riches, nor crime but poverty. And 
so you'll find it. 

PLAYFAIR. — If 'tis so, 'tis so to men's shame 
that set themselves against truth, and against na- 
ture which is but truth. In nature each thing is 
in itself weighed and valued, and not by its lug- 
gage, which is no part of it, no more than are 
riches part to man or his true quality. Why, then, 
will apish and presumptuous man shape to himself 
a rule for's measurement unlike all other things, 
to fix his body's worth by what it owns, not v^hat it 
is, as we should thus esteem the mettle of the horse 
by the gilded bridle, or of the hound's sound limbs 
and swiftness to frame our judgment on the em- 
broidered collar, or by its scabbard to prize the 
sword — heedless of the shining blade within? No 
country lout will so inaptly stumble as to do it. 

QUILLET. — O your over-flighty judgment is 
winged like a swallow, and will ever perch himself 
on the tall cedar, disdaining the flat hillock of com- 
mon sense, yet forgetting still that in that dung-hill 
most are oily grubs and fatted beetles for this 
goodly bird that in the upper region of the air feeds 
only upon garish flies. But I oft preach too as 
you do now, yet not so seriously to take it. Come, 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 



75 



will you a sample of me, and to that purpose, too, 
that you late spoke of? Come, will you have it? 

PLAYFAIR.— Go on; I'm listening. 

QUILLET. — Well then, here goes: Search me 
out this caitiff man for estimation now — you should 
ever give the word a cadence so, that the phrase 
too may be embellished as well as the matter moral 
— Let him stand forth naked and without his stilts, 
as he should stand above before his Judge and Gov- 
ernor! What gauds are these he brings! Away 
with them ! Away with these accessories, these 
complements wherewith he is adorned ! Strip ! 
strip him now ! Strip him of his lands, his tenures, 
offices and rents! Strip him of external glory bare, 
of place, of greatness, of family and of friends! 
Tear off this gaudy envelope, too, wherein he's 
wrapped about; leave nothing but his shirt — nay, 
not his shirt — for that, too, his weaver spun and is 
no true parcel to the man himself ! What body has 
he now? What members suited to their proper 
functions and due discharge of restless nature's 
coursings? Nay, then, he is over-blotched with ul- 
cerous and discharging sores, is puffed and swollen 
with uncleanly humors, groans with gouty limbs, 
and, from his over-tasked and rebellious bowels, 
pukes in your very face that load his stomach now 
refuses lodgment. Such is the outward man ; but 
search him now within for that capable and unpo- 
inted mind wherewith he happily is provided, rich in 
its own and not another's wares, and armed against 



76 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

the stroke of fortune. Go to, he is not so provi- 
sioned, but like a culpable and peevish child cries 
loudly out but for his chattel's loss, grows white- 
lipped with envy of his neighbor's fortune, trem- 
bles at the name of death and bars by night his door 
against her entrance in lest she should steal upon 
him while he sleeps to have her dues of him. Yet 
he, of God's created, will fix — O but 'tis enough! 
I am too wary a physician to taste deep of every 
drug I may mix in my pestle, and too good a phi- 
losopher to follow ever my own advice. 

PLAYFAIR. — You only mock at nature and at 
truth. 

QUILLET.— No, but on this ground I will defy 
you too, and outrun you as the nimble hare the tur- 
tle. Come, what example will you? Come, I will 
outdo you with examples! 

PLAYFAIR. — Do you go on first. To listen be- 
comes me better than to speak. 

QUILLET. — I will assail your goddess then, and 
show her heart of such flinty compound that the 
hairy Bushman (standing betwixt ape and man) 
does not own the like! She is a most selfish one. 

PLAYFAIR.— But just. 

QUILLET. — O your over-mouthed justice would 
strip us to the bone and leave them marrowless af- 
ter! What is it we hold, but's held by sufferance 
and not by justice? 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 77 

PLAYFAIR. — I could well answer that, but go 
on ; I see youVe tuned to it. 

QUILLET. — O I speak it truly, the ever busy 
housewife, Nature, teaches the selfish example. In 
her ordering she does not deal with all alike, but 
like a most unnatural mother abandons the weakly 
child to death, and picks her favorites ever among 
the strong and lusty ones, rewarding these with 
life, strength, place and the choosing of their seed 
for new issue. It is not man alone who makes his 
kindred lawful prey, but all the winged and leafy 
tenants of the fields and air. Witness here on this 
branch, the pygmy commonwealth of leaves. In 
their little world of space these simple leaves strive 
one with another, wage bitter wars, practice the 
deceitful trick, filch, steal, and blow the foul breath 
in the neighbor's face, much as people do. Here 
on the top-most twig, broad-spread in the air and 
sun, gross with selfishness, is the principal leaf. 
Why may not this be your rich and worldly man 
that, pufifed up with the winds of pride, would carry 
the sun in his bosom, suffering his beams to fall 
on none besides? Beneath his lordliness droops the 
cluster of small leaves full of a timid whiteness and 
none of the green sap. Liken these again to your 
frightened widows, pining in the mildewed garret 
and soliciting the sun of fortune. Here is youi con- 
sumptive stripling prematurely dead ; and here your 
middle householder, dwelling in the mean of for- 
tune, neither opulent nor in penury, neighboring the 



78 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

famished one that from want of nourishment can- 
not outlive the day, but must fall and wither. And 
so, from this diminutive branch, this figment of 
simplest life, may we construct the complex state, 
finding for the selfish ordinances of man their true 
parallel. For subtle life is swayed by the selfish 
law, quickening great and small to endless war. 
Even there on the grassy plat, that quietest of rest- 
less nature's work, where, to the unschooled eye, all 
is seeming peace, there is no peace, but every hand's 
breadth teems with warring forms each in its tiny 
sphere, battling for a little room as a monarch for 
his kingdom threatened. But you are bored by 
this? I see it in your face, you are bored by it. 

PLAYFAIR. — Not a whit ! I beg you go on. Go 
on, I say! 

QUILLET. — Take what thing you will, and 'tis 
the same. The red-crested cock whose hot blood 
throbs at the portals of his eyes as it would burst 
them through, beats his weaker brother from the 
roost, and like a lascivious Mormon, takes the flock 
to wife, begetting numerous issue. The strongest 
antlered buck gets the waiting doe ; the big-jawed 
swine cracks the meatiest nut; while the lion eats 
the cat waits ; when the big dog is served the little 
one may lick his beard ; the cat flays the rat and the 
rat the cockroach, and so down from A to Z. And 
all the while her watchful ladyship, unjustly just 
nature, stands by and cuts ice for the winner. But 
now that I remember it, I overlooked a sage and 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 79 

sovereign observation of some newness, which is 
pat and to the purpose. But 'tis enough. 

PLAYFAIR. — What is it? Let no good creature 
of the fancy spoil for want of a showing into the 
aid. Out with it! 

QUILLET. — That in the sea it is reported, the 
great fishes eat up the little ones. 

PLAYFAIR.— Now ! Call you that new? IVe 
heard said Noah told his wife it, the very day they 
boarded the ark, and she stood at the bulwarks 
weeping great salt tears into the water for the poor 
fishes that should be drowned in it. 

QUILLET. — And there is a piece of pretty non- 
sense devised in the interest of big-bellied aldermen 
to keep authority in awe. 

PLAYFAIR.— The fish story? 

QUILLET.— No, but that other— the ark busi- 
ness — and a hundred and some score other gro- 
tesque fables, invented at first by the fantastically 
bearded priests of unholy old times, to the mutual 
profit of these pitifully shorn priests of more unholy 
new times ! 

PLAYFAIR. — You should not quarrel with me 
on that score, but in respect of nature, and the bit- 
ter interpretations you read of her goodly book, I 
will out-talk you there for a week together without 
suppers, dinners or sleep, to show you better in- 
struction in it. 



8o OUR NEW HERALDRY 

(Enter Mrs. Playfair.) 

MRS. PLAYFAIR.— O ! And here you are. Am 
I intruding to come in? 

QUILLET.— Not in the least. 

PLAYFAIR.— You found the note I left, then? 

MRS. PLAYFAIR.— Yes, and thought to drop in 
here rather than to wait for you. 

QUILLET. — You did well. It shows your wifely 
prudence to spy your husband out so. There's no 
discreet wife but will. All husbands need a wife's 
watching. Playfair least of all, but all a little, and 
you shall ever find it so. 

MRS. PLAYFIAR.— I hope I shall not, nor was't 
for that I came. My husband holds my trust in 
him, and needs no watching. 

QUILLET. — You are yet new in the business to 
say so. You shall see anon when the squeezing 
traces chafe you. 

MRS. PLAYFAIR.— See whati^ 

QUILLET. — That husbands and lovers are not 
of the same piece! O your love-lorn poet is never 
a husband inditing honeyed sweetness to an over- 
tasked wife, but a lover rather importuning a scorn- 
ful mistress ! How shuffling should a husband's 
lines be ! How lame, how slinking and unsure, if 
ever he took up pen to do it ! Why he might write 
of nothing but their last noisy quarrel of midnight 
that waked the children from the sound sleep and 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 8i 

set them brawling, or of the morning's quarrel, or 
that one of noon, or the other one of sunset, and 
so he might divide the time, but the matter never. 
I would now some faithful recorder would honestly 
do this task. 

MRS. PLAYFAIR.— For shame on you to talk 
so ! And a married man, too ! 

QUILLET. — A married man ! Why not a mar- 
ried man having experience, rather than your newly 
bearded boy with fitful dreams of the marriage bed 
as a couch of ever-blooming roses? My wife and 
I were as cooing doves in the beginning, but now 
we are as barking magpies. You shall see, too, un- 
less you be one woman picked out of a hundred 
thousand. 

MRS. PLAYFAIR.— O from such speeches I 
think your wife had good cause for barking, and 
were I she I would bite as well as bark. Ill not 
talk further of it with this vinegar dispositioned 
one, with this uncorked bottle of last year's cider! 
I will not ! Yet you teach me all the more that 
lesson you think least of! Look, Signor Sourness! 
(Takes Playfair's arm.) You show me how just a 
man and true this is, whose every action rides upon 
the poles of truth ! Here is no varnish, no '< eneer, 
no flattery, but truth, plain truth and nobleness! 
Look well at him, for he is no more kin to such 
as you in thought or act than you are to a bush ! 
He is a man, and those but counterfeits you speak 



82 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

of ! He is my husband, and I his loyal wife, and so 
will live, and so will die ! 

PLAYFAIR.— O but after all— well— 

(Exeunt Playfair and Mrs. Playfair.) 

QUILLET. — Poor, unsophisticated innocents, 
both ! They have a thing or two to learn before 
their hopeful bobbins wind down ! But now to 
Grosscrop ! 

(Exit Quillet.) 



SCENE III 



ROOM IN BEAKS' HOUSE 

(Enter Julia and Webfoot.) 

JULIA. — As I live she did. She said those very 
words to him — and worse a hundred times if I 
could remember, but was so 'shamed to overhear 
it and so afeared to be taken at eavesdropping, as 
it might appear, for I could neither in nor out, they 
came so suddenly up to the very door unawares 
to me, and Mrs. Beaks' angry voice raking him. 

WEBFOOT. — And she tried out fat Grosscrop's 
tallow so? She frizzled him? basted and par-boiled 
him so? 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 83 

JULIA. — If hot speech can she did it. Her 
tongue's the equal of anyone's to do it in her anger. 

WEBFOOT.— Gad, I'm glad she did it! On prin- 
ciple I'm glad ! This Grosscrop's sleek fatness is 
an offense 'gainst every man's eye, and particularly 
'gainst mine that dislikes him, though he be rich 
and one of your upper citizens, and though I work 
for him, too, for payment which he begrudgingly 
renders me. I would gladly see any hot iron siz- 
zling in his belly's grease, the more so as it was 
a woman put it hot into him. And it was all for 
Feathers she roasted him? 

JULIA. — Yes ; and threatened him that he should 
let Feathers) out, or she would pull down the 
gilded shutters of his house to let the whole world 
see what filth was in it, and though the string once 
cut would let down her's as well. She said she 
would open the window wide to slander-feeding 
buzzards, and would find that carrion there to fat 
the leanest buzzard of them all, and if her own bones 
should be picked with others for it. But he an- 
swered that he would not. 

WEBFOOT.— Would not? 

JULIA. — Would not or could not; but first he 
denied all hand in it. 

WEBFOOT. — There are strange things between 
these two, as I've heard hinted. But let's to our 
own business, leaving theirs alone. You'll not 
out again with young Sage? Your promise to it, 



84 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

Julia ! Come, your promise ! If you love me you 
will not ! Come, your promise now ! 

JULIA. — Who should hinder if it please me? 
What master have I to hinder if I will? And his 
eyes are handsome brown ones, and speaks well 
out of books, and's taller than you, and, as I think, 
a much properer young man ! If I will 1 will, 
and there's an end ! And you dared me to it at 
first! 

WEBFOOT.— It was but in fun I did! 

JULIA. — O you shall have fun! I'll not deny 
you fun ! 

WEBFOOT. — You kill me a hundred times over 
to do it ! And killing me you kill my love with 
me ! O such a night as I spent last ! I dreamt we 
two stood on a precipice overlooking the ragged 
brink, and my arm about you so, and I offered to 
kiss you so, and — 

JULIA. — O that is only so so! Do not squeeze 
me so! 

(Enter Mrs. Beaks and Mrs. Cranebill.) 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— He will not do it? He 
will do nothing in my brother's behalf? 
MRS. BEAKS.— Nothing! 
MRS. CRANEBILL.— O it is the last hope gone ! 

MRS. BEAKS. — It had been too much to expect, 
to expect it otherwise ! Such men do nothing that 
does not bend to their advantage, and nothing 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 85 

leave undone that does. While the outraged law 
does squeeze innocent Feathers, it is less like to 
seize up guilty Grosscrop. O crime can set no 
sheltering screen up half so well to hide behind it, 
as pointing out suspicion the way to another man ; 
and therefore those clever cheaters do cheat justice, 
too, for when she makes her rough draft upon them 
for the wrong, they deftly turn her off by putting 
in her hand a substitute. 

JULIA. — Take away your arm ! Have you no 
decency? and the ladies here? 

MRS. BEAKS.— But who are they here? What 
prodigies have we here that do love-making — a 
thing that's dead and should be mouldy with a hun- 
dred years' dust? (To Webfoot) How old are you, 
pray? 

WEBFOOT. — I? Why, begging excuse for a 
short answer and telling plain truth, I came on 
some thirty year ago of a Friday morning. 

MRS. BEAKS.— And she? Her shyness will not 
let her speak. 

WEBFOOT. — She was some ten year lag of that, 
I believe. 

MRS. BEAKS.— So young both! Why, I mis- 
took you for some straying wanderers of the prim- 
rose age that escaped time's pruning scissors, but 
that you are not! What! And she blushes, too, 
and stammers? How genuine is the appearance of 
it! And he stands to her like a golden pheasant 



86 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

cock, puffing his feathers out to assume a largeness 
he has not, as he would dispute this hen's posses- 
sion with all comers! Pry, from what musty ro- 
mancing volume did you steal these pretty tricks? 

WEBFOOT.— What tricks? 

MRS. BEAKS. — Why, to play at love-making. 

WEBFOOT.— We do not play, good lady. 

MRS. BEAKS. — It must need be play, for there 
are none now living in the world that do it other- 
wise than as play ! And so rare indeed has the thing 
itself grown that a thousand amongst us will any 
night pay you out their begrudging coin to witness, 
at the play of it, some sleek, robust fellow in a 
powdered wig, and bellowing bull's voice of loud- 
ness, die frantically for love upon the stage in a 
frenzy of fine passion, though behind the scene, this 
same one with a vulgar oath ripped out, will beat 
his timorous wife for sewing his shirt's button too 
loosely on. It has fallen to this ; and you cannot 
be but in play, and feigning this lost thing! 

WEBFOOT. — We are not in play but in good 
earnest — and to be bold saying it — hope to be 
hitched close some day, to settle down then as good 
husband and better wife, and so make merry with 
it. Is't not, Julia? 

JULIA. — Go to with such talk ! You shame me 
before the ladies ! You do, indeed ! 

WEBFOOT. — O the ladies know we will be mar- 
ried, and therefore have license for such free speech. 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 87 

MRS. BEAKS.— Married? 

WEBFOOT.— Yes; married. 

MRS. BEAKS.— No more but that? O I knew it 
could be but that ! I knew it was but the old play 
of marriage that runs its course upon the stage of 
life in three acts that are of no kin. The first act 
and the shortest is pastoral chiefly, with settings 
of moonlit waters and woody paths, bouquets by 
the wayside picked and idle compliments that sound 
like truth and false promises that are no part of 
memory to hold them. The second act is but 
laughing comedy wherein 'tis everyone's place in 
it to wink at these green ones newly betroth, till 
the smiling minister hands them over the little 
parchment paper, the innocent certifier to the bond- 
age, and the door is shut. Next comes a soberer 
act, the longest and the last one, where the merry 
play makes shift from lightness into tragedy, tak- 
ing the dire plot up in a thousand devious ways 
but all in horror ending, until the curtain falls, and 
so the play is done; and this being as it is, you 
shall never see your romancing author follow the 
pair to the threshold of this last act, since there 
is no matter for his pen. I knew it was but the old 
play. 

WEBFOOT.— The old play it well may be, but 
with new actors in it, and those, too, that have wit 
to change a thing or two that may not be to their 
liking. What say, Julia? 



88 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

JULIA. — O you talk too much! What business 
have you? 

(Exeunt Julia and Webfoot.) 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— How good It is to see 
young folks in love together ! Yet I never witness 
it but to make me sad, the more for it recalls that 
time when we were but girls — you an ambitious 
one and I a timid — and we talked of such husbands 
as we should have. 

MRS. BEAKS. — You were eager then to be a 
wife. 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— God forgive me for it! 
O to think what then I thought 'twould be and to 
see how now it is ! My husband then should be no 
man but hero, yet I am wedded now to neither man 
nor hero, but only brute, and that a cruel one ! God 
forgive me now for saying no more than truth of 
him I'm bound to! O he treats me shamefully! 

MRS. BEAKS.— I well believe it from the things 
you tell of him. 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— I did not tell the half, nor 
could I tell it ! There are no words tell such things 
but in the half ! My children only hold me to his 
house, or I would rid myself of him if my life went 
too. He is grown bitterer now of late, since my 
poor brother fell into these sorry troubles, and gibes 
at me now for my family's bad blood that fixes this 
stain upon his children ! 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 89 

MRS. BEAKS.— He has small bravery that will 
so taunt such a one. 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— He is hopelessly fallen of 
late into drink and politics, and labors now in 
Grosscrop's behalf for some reward he's promised. 
He provides me nothing for the house's support 
nor the children's clothes to keep them decent, yet 
beats me if his meals are not at all hours waiting 
him, or the children be dressed shabbily, v/hich, 
God knows, is harder on my eyes to see than his 
blows are upon my flesh to feel. He will strike 
me in the face of Sunday morning, and on the even- 
ing of that day lead me trembling on his arm to 
church, where he will toss into the plate, with a 
gusto of liberality, the ten cent piece that cost me 
two hours' darning at a neighbor's old stockings to 
win. This he does, as he says, for politics' sake, that 
the church folk may deem him a fit man to tie to, 
and they do it, for he is trustee there, deacon and 
I know not what. This is the lot that is fallen to 
me, that I must live and die in ; but yours has been 
a different one. 

MRS. BEAKS.— Different? 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— Your husband's thrifty, 
puts comfort in your house, clothes and feeds you 
well. 

MRS. BEAKS.— No, but he starves me. 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— Starves? 

MRS. BEAKS. — As truly as any ever starved. 



90 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— O you only jest, for have 
I not seen the table all but groaning under the 
plentiful load set before you for eating? And call 
you that starving? 

MRS. BEAKS.— The mind needs food as the 
body does, and languishes without it; so went mine 
pining at my husband's board. But 'tis no matter 
now ; I deserved no better at his hands. By stealth 
I fetched into his house a skeleton in my closet hid 
and since have kept it. 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— A skeleton! 

MRS. BEAKS. — But I've misgivings now the 
door will soon be rent apart and this skeleton will 
walk apace ; I've misgivings it soon will be ! 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— God of mercy, have you 
been grave-robber? 

MRS. BEAKS.— I am not that innocent! 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— O you frighten me! The 
very thought of it ! A skeleton indeed ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— I will tell you all! Come, a lit- 
tle play now. Do you act out the father confessor's 
part and I the repentant sinner's, and so I will 
open my faults to you. But no, that were too long 
to do it in that way, and too much circumstance. 
Let you rather name over the catalogue of inhib- 
ited sins and you will hear me answer yea — yea — 
yea. Yet I will tell you. Upon my birth my mother 
died — I begin at my birth as I should relate a biog- 
raphy, but our true biography should begin with 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 91 

our great grand, and grand great parents, who were 
sowers of those seeds bequeathed us for harvesting. 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— I fear to hear you speak 
so ! Come, leave off this play now ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— No; but I will confess! My soul 
will burst or be delivered of this load ; I will con- 
fess to you even to the most secret things! 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— Go on, then, if you will; 
I will listen. 

MRS. BEAKS. — My poor life was purchased dear 
that cost a mother's death, for so she died deliver- 
ing me, and left my father alone and stricken, who 
was a fond and harmless man that did no wrong 
himself nor suspected others, but better loved the 
converse of judicious dead ones in his books than 
ever the company of the foolish living, and — O here 
is a dry tale ! Those words nearest my lips hang 
ever back and give place to idleness ! 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— I see no wrong in this, 
and indeed you told me all before and how that 
afterward your father died when you were aged 
fourteen, committing you then to Grosscrop, his 
trusted friend, in guardianship. 

MRS. BEAKS.— In guardianship? O in guard- 
ianship? 

MRS. CRANEBILL— So you said, and in truth it 
is a thing all the world knows, as well. 

MRS. BEAKS. — No, but hear me now! I will 
tell you straight without embellishment! Let the 



92 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

filthy truth fall flat without this garnish ! I was bawd 
once to the unclean beast — I was mistress to him — 
wanton — or by whatever fouler word men name it — 
and almost from the very first! By flattery — by 
wily tricks — by fraud — O and by force, too — he 
brought me first to it ! (Voices within.) 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— O God of mercy! O here 
are some coming! 

MRS. BEAKS.— Yet this is not all, for I must 
to tell you now how this husband was deceived 
and — 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— Let us leave here! Let us 
go at once, and privately we shall talk. 

(Exeunt Mrs. Beaks and Mrs. Cranebill. Enter 
Beaks and Walter Grosscrop.) 

BEAKS.— The trouble lies all in this, Walter. 
No words can convince your father that you are in 
the least mended. He's fixed in it beyond the power 
of tongue to dissuade him that you shall have no 
more money of him until you take new habits on. 
The very mention of your name puts him to a rage. 

WALTER.— And you talked to him full of it? 
You told him of my late good behavior, quitting all 
drink? And women, too, for that matter? You 
told him that? 

BEAKS. — That I believed 'twas so, and pleaded 
with him in the best words I could summon to it, 
but 'twas of no use. He is firmer fixed in his resolve 
than a rock that you shall have nothing. 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 93 

WALTER.— Then I will myself to him. I do not 
fear his anger. 

BEAKS. — That were but madness to do. He is 
in such humor with you that no speech can touch 
him, and your own least of anyone's. 

WALTER.— Yet I will do it. My desperate for- 
tune punches me to it, and I have that argument I 
think will stir him. 

BEAKS. — You should be advised well, for an in- 
discretion now committed in your haste might defer 
the good end you desire. Therefore you should be 
advised. 

WALTER. — So I am, and it is to talk with him. 
He comes in here, does he not? 

BEAKS. — Yes, directly; but I beg you to depart 
now. Entrust the matter to me in attorneyship. 
I well know how to advance your case to a happy 
ending in good time. Leave it with me. 

WALTER. — No, but I will try my argument with 
him. As well brave fortune to an ill conclusion 
hastily as to die awaiting her for a better. 

BEAKS. — You're mad to do it, but here now he 

comes. 

(Enter Grosscrop.) 

GROSSCROP.— Good morning, Beaks! 
BEAKS. — Good morning, and a pleasant one! 
WALTER (aside). — He has none for me. It is 
said, 'tis a wise father knows his own son, but here 



94 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

is no wise father, for he knows not his. (Aloud) — 
Good morning, sir! (Aside) — This we call turning 
the deaf ear! 

GROSSCROP. — Is my answer yet dispatched to 
the Merchants' League accepting the pledge they 
ask me, should good chance put me in as senator? 

BEAKS, — I was on the very point of taking it 
to them. 

GROSSCROP.— If you please, Beaks, I would 
like it hastily. Our seed has little time for ripening, 
and should be in the ground. 

BEAKS. — I will go at once. 

(Exit Beaks.) 

WALTER. — Good morning, sir, a second time! 
Or does't take three sesames to unlock, as Ala 
Baba's cave did? Then for a third! — Good morn- 
ing, sir! 

GROSSCROP.— When of late has water grown 
so scarce that a young man must about in a filthy 
face and filthier dress? Are there no cleansing 
wayside brooks to leap into ? 

WALTER. — Water and I are at loggerheads, and 
no longer mix it. I take mine straight. 

GROSSCROP.— Whose son is this? The birch 
seed grows to birch, the maple, maple, and the 
sturdy oak from the acorn springs, but here is one 
defies this law in nature, and holds no likeness with 
the father. Whose son is it? 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 95 

WALTER. — By my dead mother's honesty when 
she lived, I think I be your son, but could I choose 
a father I had chosen another one. 

GROSSCROP. — O shame of youthful manhood, 
that, in its strength and daring, by right of nature, 
should be planted at the apex of the world, at that 
proud height to conquer; yet here is one will stoop 
from there to make companionship of rags and the 
mire of roads ! Shame upon you ! 

WALTER. — If I have rags let you be my seams- 
tress to mend them for me. I would gladly employ 
you to it, and you have the wherewith, too, for you 
need but open your purse to me and it's "away 
rags." 

GROSSCROP.— I will give you nothing. 

WALTER. — I am son to you. It's no good 
father's place to answer his son so. 

GROSSCROP. — Nor would I so answer son of 
mine that had not shamed me with his work. 

WALTER. — It is your work that shames you, 
for I am it. You do unwisely to deal wrathfully 
with your handiwork. No artisan will set you the 
example to rail at the plow, dipper, spoon, hat or 
what leaves his hand. 

GROSSCROP. — I disown you for my son. 

WALTER. — No, then, these are but empty 
words, and undo nothing already done. I am your 
son that holds his true inheritance of you. Had 



9C OUR NEW HERALDRY 

you been that father you should, then, too, had I 
been that son. It is no more than this. 

GROSSCROP. — Your blood is stranger to me in 
all but that it is my blood. 

WALTER. — No, but it is true heir, too, to you in 
its behavior. 

GROSSCROP.— I think not so, for when laid I 
drunk of nights in gutters? When did the rising 
sun, climbing the ruddy east, peep through the 
pane, to spy me maudlin in a wanton's bed? When 
did I make of dice, and cards, and turning tables, 
and painted wheels, my implements of husbandry? 
When were these things my nourishment that 
makes the sum of yours? 

WALTER. — O in these particulars it pleases you 
to name over, the indictment does not fit you, but in 
a hundred others of as base a sort, I can draw it 
snug, and fetch the evidence in that will convict. 
By heaven ! I hold this rotten and despised blood 
of you ! I am no monster sprung of accident causes, 
nor sportful freak of humorous Nature that erring 
ones deem her a trafficker in. She is not so, but by 
as fixed and universal law as that which downward 
from the dizzy dome hurls the unsupported ball, 
she works and moves from sequence unto sequence. 
I do no more in this my life, than to unfold that 
thing I was when you compounded with my mother 
to beget me. My body's lineaments bear strongly 
the semblances of yours. My nose and features 
have the proportions too of these you own. Your 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 97 

eye and mine are of a likeness, and often I have 
heard strangers say to you, how like you is your 
son. These are but the outward seemings, yet I 
will match you full as well within, till the com- 
parison shall disadvantage you. Yoke your be- 
havior in with mine, match act with act, our worst 
with worst, and mine will hang their heads to keep 
yours company, as country striplings do to trot 
beside their bolder cousins of the town. O my 
suckling calves will scarce hitch with your horned 
beasts, for when did I despoil a girl, in wardship 
trusted to me, and after give her for wife to unsus- 
pecting friend? What black one of mine, yoked 
with this blacker one of yours, that would not take 
an angel's whiteness on by the comparison? 

GROSSCROP. — What meaning do you hide in 
this? 

WALTER. — The meaning is, I know what wife 
it was you gave this stupid fellow Beaks, who 
serves you. I have not been so blind as the bat by 
day nor the hawk by night, but have kept both 
hawk's and bat's eyes on you to serve both sea- 
sons. 

GROSSCROP. — Unnatural and cruel son, who 
never did but bite the tending hand that nursed 
his helpless infancy up, guarded his sick bed on 
many a watchful night, clothed his nakedness, fed, 
sheltered and protected him ! What father has an- 
other such a son? 

WALTER. — You should admire me here for my 



98 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

sound discretion which smacks now of your own, 
for it counsels me to hold this thing silent, but on 
one condition ; and as silence is golden, the con- 
dition also must be. I'll not tell Beaks it, if you 
but open your purse to me. When your purse be 
open my mouth shall be shut, but with your purse 
shut my mouth shall be open. It is simple as a 
game of see-saw — up Jack and down Jill, or up 
Jill and down Jack. Let you undertake to keep 
Jack up and I Jill down. 

GROSSCROP.— Never ! 

WALTER.— Then will I tell Beaks? 

(Enter Rev. Pinkwort.) 

PINKWORT.— There should never another 
paper be on Sunday sold, had my hand the power 
to hinder and my brain the wit to devise ways and 
means against it. I am out now like a nor'west 
wind sweeping all before me with my petition 
against Sabbath-breakers and Sunday-sellers of 
printed naughtiness, that empty God's house of his 
people, leaving ;us poor ministers to preach to 
empty benches. But 'tis a God-fearing people still 
if they be but right taken, for I met no citizen but 
gave his name to it, and would in capitals too, for 
the asking. Let your name go in Grosscrop ! Put 
it there as a testimony to righteousness, and a 
mill-stone about the neck of all wrong-doers ! Put 
it there ! 

GROSSCROP.— What thing is this? 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 99 

PINKWORT. — A creature of my poor invention, 
nor one I am ashamed to own, either as respects 
style, grammar or fullness of matter! It is my 
petition against Sabbath-breakers in common, and 
newsboys in particular. Let us at last nip vice in 
the bud, that no stock may come forth. Let us 
cleanse the fountain that the stream may run clear. 
Let us trim, prune, pleach and tend the tree that we 
may gather the fruit in. Let us pull out the tares 
from the young wheat, that it may fall golden into 
the measure at harvest. O the vice, the wickedness, 
the shame, the degredation, the desolate homes, 
the weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth, that 
flow from the evil of Sabbath-breaking! Let your 
name go to it! 

GROSSCROP. — I will read it over as we go. 

(Exeunt Grosscrop and Rev. Pinkwort.) 

WALTER. — I marvel that he did not ask me my 
name to it. Well, it's no matter. Smooth-shaven 
sanctity and I are at outs of late, and we met in 
hell, would scarce say ''how-de-do" or "hot 
weather." They all hold me now no better a one 
than the devil's own. It were a pity then to fall 
below their expectations to do otherwise than as 
the devil might. Therefore, will I tell Beaks, for 
I'm sure the devil would had he but my mortal 
tongue. And so will I ! 

(Enter Beaks.) 

BEAKS. — (Aside) — Here is one at odds with 
tLofC. 



loo OUR NEW HERALDRY 

fortune. Do you come off bringing the loan with 
you? 

WALTER.— No. 

BEAKS. — I said 'twould be so. 
WALTER.— You did. 
BEAKS. — What puts you so in a study? 
WALTER. — I am vexed of a question. 
BEAKS.— What question? 

WALTER.— To know what that dog should 
rightly be named, that when his master cuts him 
of his genatives, will still serve that master and 
faithfully. 

BEAKS. — Why he should be called nothing but 
a dog. 

WALTER.— Is he not fool too? 

BEAKS. — Most certain he is, and in a sense, so 
too are all dogs. 

WALTER. — Then such a dog and such a fool 
you are. 

BEAKS. — What meaning do you hide here? 

WALTER. — Have you a garret in this house? 

BEAKS.— Yes. 

WALTER. — Or a cellar where none listen at 
door? 

BEAKS. — That too there is, but why? 

WALTER. — I have a speech to make to you 
where none are listening. 



OUR NEW HERALDRY loi 

BEAKS. — Is't to borrow money of me? Truly, 
Walter, I have not a penny on me. 

WALTER.— Let us off to the cellar and I will 
tell you privately. 

BEAKS. — This way then to my private room. 
We may talk there and none to hear us. (Aside) 
He will sure try me now for five hundred ! This 
prologue could not be to a less sum ! It's a rare 
trick in these spendthrift borrowers to approach 
it with solemn show and circumstance as he this. 
He'll beg it stoutly but I'll stouter refuse! He'll 
tell me ten lies to have it and I twenty to deny him, 
and therefore it's twenty to ten he'll not have it! 

(Exeunt both; enter Mrs. Beaks and Mrs. Crane- 
bill.) 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— O Anne ! It is a dreadful 
thing you tell me ! 

MRS. BEAKS. — Do you put me still down in the 
list of happy wives? Or do you cull me out of it 
now as they do rotten boards from the pile? 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— O such a thing! My 
separate troubles are but small to this! What a 
world it is ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— Falsehood! All is falsehood! 
We think it, speak it, eat it, drink it, live it and die 
in it! We nurse it with our mother's milk and are 
carried to our graves amid the trumperies and 
trappings of it. 



I02 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— And so long you've held 
this secret from your husband ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— O but if by so doing only to 
follow the pattern of my married sisters ! Why, 
can your simpleness fancy that they tell their hus- 
bands all of their secret imaginings and bawdy 
dreams where in sleep they do worse things than I 
have done waking? No! No! We have another 
pattern to cut our cloth to! 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— It shocks me so! What 
pattern is't? 

MRS. BEAKS.— Look! Here she is! Your so- 
ciety dame ! This delicate creature with the lily 
milk-paps at her breast all but o'er-leaping their 
low barriers of frills and laces! What are the 
meaning of her silly grimaces without cause, ex- 
posing her white teeth, pink gums and red lips? 
Why all that languor of positition though seated 
upon a chair matted with down, and waving of 
chalked arms above the head without occasion for 
the pin there is not unloosed, as well as the promi- 
nence always of the particular finger decked with 
the ]sparkling carbuncle? This dainty one will 
turn up her sensitive nose at the fly-speck in the 
platter, and to the leachery in the eyes of that bald 
head opposite, that hoary voice, she will give the 
answering look that drives his lagging blood plod- 
ding in vain toward those maimed vessels burnt 
away by the unholy fires of twenty years ago! 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 103 

I have long witnessed it all and soon will give them 
fair occasion ! 

MRS.CRANEBILL.— Occasion? What occasion? 

MRS. BEAKS.— To talk, which is their dearest 
employment next after one other. They soon shall 
have a dainty morsel to roll upon their tongues' 
tips and tickle their palates with. 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— You will let none know it! 
Not on your life! Consider your husband, and 
its effect on him! 

MRS. BEAKS.— He shall be the first! I will 
begin by telling him! 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— You are surely mad! 

MRS. BEAKS.— Most like ! 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— And that he should hear 
it from your own lips ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— O if it will bring on no money's 
loss, but that it will not! How dear a thing is 
money! Had we a poet now living in this age his 
odes should all be to money or else his volume 
should lie rusting in the stall unbought and unread ! 

(Enter Julia.) 

JULIA. — Will you need me tonight for any use? 

MRS BEAKS.— No, now, but what's the rest? 
Come to it. 

JULIA. — Only that Webfoot asked me out to a 
play! But if I'm wanted! 



I04 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

MRS. BEAKS.— Why what then, if you are 
wanted ? 

JULIA — I'll not go of course. 

MRS. BEAKS.— Then of course you'll go! I 
hold you by no string! Yet it's getting frequent, 
is't not? — twice this week and it but new yet? 

JULIA. — No, that was Saturday the last time ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— So long ago? But will you 
marry this man? Come, now, is't so? 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— For shame, Anne I See 
how she blushes with such questioning! 

JULIA. — He has asked me to wait two years. 

MRS. BEAKS.— Two years? 

JULIA. — Poor ones must have money to marry, 
and we have none. He thinks to go north to the 
mines, and will send for me there, or come and 
fetch me. 

MRS. BEAKS. — Then is there never one in pet- 
ticoats between eleven and sixty up there that he 
will make love to? Two years? How many nights 
are in two years? 

JULIA. — O you only make a fool of me! 

MRS. BEAKS.— Indeed I do not! Our mothers 
did us all that office and looked heaven in the face 
the while. (Exit Julia.) There's one will make 
a good wife. 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— A good wife ! You puzzle 
me to understand you. Here you jest with this girl 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 105 

as you had no care in the wide world, and such a 
state as you were in but now! 

MRS. BEAKS.— It is that I have come to a reso- 
lution. Action ! Action ! I have a thousand thirsts 
for action. (Holds up a purse) But here's it they 
say makes the mare go. 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— What next? 

MRS. BEAKS.— Come, look at these pretty yel- 
low slaves. One, two, three, four, five ! How cheap 
a thing is man! For so many of these, filling so 
little of infinite space, I bought a man today. 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— A man! 

MRS. BEAKS. — An 'twas not one of your rag- 
ged ruffians in the gristled beard, where vermin 
roam the commons, and the fumes of putrifying 
grease, to stop the nostrils at! Not such a one, 
but a lordly man, an upright man, full of noble age 
and gray dignity; one that will chant you hymns 
of Sunday, bow his head at meals, and with rev- 
erend visage tell young folks by what rules weak 
flesh may best avoid the naughtiness of the world. 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— And you bought him? 
How bought him? 

MRS. BEAKS.— O 'twas a pretty thing to see 
this old man's avarice and his fear strive each for 
mastery. It was fear now, now avarice, until this 
fickle goddess here in the coin, this wanton that 
takes a new lord thrice between the strokes of the 
clock, kissed his lean palm; then he yielded; then 



io6 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

I bought him and paid for him, too, in double, and 
I dare say, three times the amount he sold for more 
than a thousand times before. But enough of this ! 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— O, I see you have some 
meaning in it more than that ! Bought him ! What 
for? To do what thing? 

MRS. BEAKS.— To turn a key in a lock— the 
light-handed trick. 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— I fear this is something 
that concerns my brother, some rash and womanish 
thing you dream of. If it is so, I have a right to 
know it. I can plainly see you are more excited 
than you will let me believe. You must tell me 
all if it is so. 

MRS. BEAKS. — It is too biting, too strong a 
liquor to pour into so frail a vessel. Your little 
trunk would soon be eaten through and let it all 
around, and there is the wind that, with the tongue 
of slander, licks up every foul breath that escapes 
us. But I will presently tell you more. (Calling) 
Julia! Julia! (Re-enter Julia.) I am going out 
to a neighbor's house. If my master should come 
in, let him know it. 

JULIA. — Your master? 

MRS. BEAKS.— My husband, then. But where 
is that lubberly squash-bloom of yours, that Web- 
foot, who holds so many words at commandment? 
I heard his unmusical voice out there. 

JULIA. — Yes, he has not yet gone. 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 107 

MRS. BEAKS.— Fetch him in; but stay, I will 
do it. (Goes out, returning immediately with Web- 
foot.) 

WEB FOOT. — You are too considerate of one 
in my position ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— There! You two shall have the 
house between you, and must properly behave. 

WEBFOOT. — We shall behave like two doves. 

MRS. BEAKS. — Out on such a gross speech! 
For do not these shameless ones fly to the very 
house-tops for their uses ! Doves, indeed ! I will 
not leave my house so. 

WEBFOOT. — Let us play, then, that we are se- 
date married folk, as we hope one day to be, and 
that this be our own house. 

MRS. BEAKS.— It is much better so. Then must 
you loose the icy, northern blast that seals up love's 
blooms into black and undistinguishable knots and 
whips the pollen-bearing bee home to the wintry 
hive; for so is the marriage bond. 

(Exeunt Mrs. Beaks and Mrs. Cranebill.) 

WEBFOOT.— There's a gay filly full of frisking 
gambols. Man never lives longer than he may 
learn something, if he but use eyes and ears as 
given him. There is no day but teaches me that 
we plain ones do not know the hundredth part of 
your rich folks' pranks. They perform most strange 



io8 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

tricks, these favorites of her ladyship of the painted 
wheel. 

JULIA. — What do you mean by that? "Her 
ladyship of the painted wheel?" 

WEBFOOT.— That is old Dame Fortune, that 
by her striped wheel finds out what a man shall 
have. I read't in a book once, and since I 
fell into a job with these rich folks I save up all 
such odd ends, for they are sticklers for big words, 
and have a kind of pride in it if their hired man 
be well-spoken. So lean a trick will hold a man 
so fat a place. But what was her meaning there 
of doves? That I did not catch. 

JULIA. — Some crazy word of hers. She has 
been full of these foolish speeches for a few days 
past. 

WEBFOOT. — No, but it had meaning in it more 
than that, and to my mind, nothing over delicate. 
Were I married man to one of your fine ladies, 
God saving me from it, I would have three women 
to spy after her. 

JULIA. — And who then should watch them that 
were watching? 

WEBFOOT.— They should be ill-favored old 
crones, the homelier the fitter, with a better itch 
for money than any other thing an idle mind might 
dream of. A wife that has no shift to make of it, 
but to perfume and dress her body's daintiness, to 
eat heat-engendering meats and loll on soft cush- 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 109 

ions to inflame men*s eyes, is by all laws the poor- 
est keeper of a husband's belongings. 

JULIA. — I fear you are one of those narrow 
rogues that think a woman has no rights. If that 
be so I may yet take back my word. When a poor 
girl promises she then finds out him she promised 
to. Who does all this you speak of? 

WEB FOOT.— Why, the rich man's wife, that 
lets out at the bottom of the bag what it cost her 
husband his dearest soul to put in at the top; but 
what she lets out of the bag is mere stuff to what 
she lets in at his chamber. There are no greater 
fools at large than your rich men. 

JULIA. — Then for all I can see there's many a 
one striving to become a fool. 

WEBFOOT.— Yet to see how blind as bats these 
fellows of stocks, and bonds, and quarterly divi- 
dends, and accumulated profits and what not be- 
sides, can be! They will smell you out the thiev- 
ing hackman who cheats them of a five-cent piece 
in the delivery of a parcel, but to the arch-pilferer 
that steals away the honor of their wives, they give 
the good right hand of enduring friendship. The 
rich man's quality is a strange composition of 
shrewdest sight and ogling blindness ; for he, as 
it were, is color-blind, distinguishing only such 
washes as are compounded of yellowest gold, but 
these he can see farther than another man dare drive 
his thoughts. O that was a scurvy one he played 



iio OUR NEW HERALDRY 

on old Grosscrop ! Had one like me, without the 
permit and the payment, too, dared from his barn- 
yard to draw off a load of foulest dung, he had 
given me the grand bounce and perfume added, but 
on this pious usurper of his dearest office he cannot 
smile too pleasantly. There is but one sin extant 
and that is petty villainy, for the great villain reaps 
a prince's harvest and is off without let or hin- 
drance. And so the round world rolls round from 
day to day, and then rolls round again ! I have a 
thought now that's worth a penny. 

JULIA. — So seldom a thing in you should be 
worth two! What is it? 

WEBFOOT.— I think that Justice, fishing out 
escaped rogues for punishment, is a most lame and 
wooden fisherman. They that fish in the sea, pull 
to them the great fish chiefly, letting the little ones 
through the meshed net, but Justice, fishing out 
for due punishment in the sea of rogues, catches 
only minnows and no great fish, though the place 
be black with them. And this being as it is, you 
shall see the petty stealer of copperish dross with 
his hair dipt for it, but the bold lifter of a na- 
tion's treasury sits down on the senator's bench. 

JULIA. — You spy too much into these hidden 
things for one in your position. He that serves 
ought not to look too curiously on things beyond 
his duty. 

WEBFOOT.— Duty! O that word is a dead 



OUR NEW HERALDRY m 

husk now! — one that the infectious weevil stole 
the plump kernel from, displacing it with stinking 
excrement. And a strange thing it is that an 
empty sound should live on men's tongues still 
that imports no meaning! This gilded age never 
would have coined the word had it not been done, 
for it no longer has either use or place in the econ- 
omy of man's behavior, but as a sound only. It is 
a most shrunken and abandoned word, and the new 
dictionary shall not hold it between the lids. 

JULIA. — But come, now ! What is't you say of 
Grosscrop? I have an itch to know, and that, they 
say, is the woman's part, but for all I can see, man 
is the greater gossiper. 

WEBFOOT. — But being woman, therefore 
a party in the action, you lose all qualification to 
judge your own case. This is good law, seasoned 
by antique precedents. So do these lawyers say^ 
these bantams, that, for a golden fee, whip spurs 
at one another in the cock pits of sovereign jus- 
tice. You have no right to judge between man 
and woman. 

JULIA. — So you have no right to judge between 
these two, being a man; and many a woman I 
could name that, at the foul-smelling tub, rubs 
knotted sores into her bare arms, and the while her 
gossip-mad husband sagely wags his tongue over 
affairs of foreign policy and ballot-box broils in 
smutted saloons and street corners. But what is 
it about Grosscrop? 



Ill OUR NEW HERALDRY 

WEBFOOT.— A quantity of woors about him, 
robbed from the unoffending backs of big-eyed 
sheep that sinned less against the high ordinances 
of nature than he that now wears it; for they say 
his breeches are of wool and these are about him, 
unless he be in the employment that needs none. 

JULIA. — But what did he? No more nonsense! 

WEBFOOT.— It is not what he did but what 
another in his place did. If the bird that husbands 
dread — the night-warbling cuckoo — has not twit- 
tered a merry note in's bed, then am I no reader of 
signs and omens, and Pinkwort more virtuous than 
a boy not yet arrived at puberty. 

JULIA.— What? The Reverend Pinkwort? 
Whom they say will marry Miss Kate? 

WEBFOOT. — Reverend or irreverend — what 
you will; but Pinkwort's the man, and whether he 
will marry Miss Kate or she him, or each the other, 
is beyond my knowledge to tell it, for I am no 
reader of cards to tell fortunes between lovers. Yet 
if the hasty wench has a fever to know in ad- 
vance what mettle her pious professor has in him, 
I can tell her whom she might apply to. 

JULIA. — O you are vulgar mouthed ! To whom, 
then? 

WEBFOOT.— To her stepmother. (Voices 
within.) But someone comes. 

JULIA. — It is Beaks again, and with him that 
vile and drunken Walter, too! It would not do 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 113 

that they should find us so in possession here ! Let 
us into the kitchen, for there is a servant's ground ! 

WEBFOOT.— No, but you stay here and I will 
go, for it is full time I should and past ! 

(Exit Webfoot.) 

JULIA. — (Calling) At seven o'clock ! I shall look 
for you at seven o'clock! 

WEBFOOT.— (Within) Or half-past! 

JULIA. — Half-past, indeed! Before I promised 
him, had I said seven, he'd have made it six, and 
insisted with a show of fair compliments, and I, 
like a silly goose, would have yielded to this flat- 
tery! Yet now he will tell me half-past, and in a 
tone that admits no debate. Such is man, who in 
affairs of love never was nor will be constant, nor 
value that he has but only that he cannot attain to. 
I've heard said, and believe it true, that saucy and 
pretentious man will venture his most precious 
neck to do the vain conceits of an idle mistress who 
disdains him, but should she yield herself to him 
in wedlock's honorable bond, exchanging faithful 
and enduring love for her disdain, within this fort- 
night he'll throw her ofif in scorn as the giddy, 
changeful boy the toy once coveted; and this rude 
lesson must woman learn, that man is subject to 
her ruling will, not as she freely gives, but as she 
in strength withholds, and therein man shows him- 
self a most ungracious ingrate. 



114 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

(Re-enter Beaks and Waltef.) 

WALTER. — And for a further proof of my 
father's villainy and your wife's incontinence, wit- 
ness here this mark from birth upon my neck — a 
pygmy hand with finger open, and, as it were, 
pointing you out the way to this shame worked on 
you. Did ever you see the like before? 

BEAKS.— O God! This is a miracle! O the 
lechers ! 

WALTER. — Do not speak so fond, but tell me? 

BEAKS. — It is twin-brother to one my child 
owns, and in the self-same place ! My child ! I 
foul my lips ! Dog ! You are of an ill breed. (Of- 
fers to strike.) 

WALTER. — No, but do not strike me! It is no 
good office to a friend. 

BEAKS.— (To Julia.) Bid Mrs. Beaks in ! Go, 
I say! 

JULIA. — She's out, sir; this very minute gone 
to a neighbor's. 

BEAKS. — Fetch her in ! Go, fetch her in ! 
(Exit Julia.) 

WALTER. — I have done my part; the rest is 
yours to do. Let me go now. 

BEAKS. — O you shall not escape me! I warn 
you that ! 

WALTER. — Nor will you drag me into it here 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 115 

if I know myself. What I've told you Fve proved 
and stand ready again to prove ; and in any demand 
against this sinful old man, my father, you shall 
find me at your elbow, not flinching. But as for 
jumping on the neck of a helpless woman — I do not 
second you, and so will bid you, now, good-day ! 

BEAKS. — O you would shirk ! You would slink ! 
This hints at a lie, but you shall meet it now ! 

WALTER.— If you still have doubts of it, 
why, then, sleep with it on the easy bed, eat Avith 
it at table and smoke over it with long and medita- 
tive countenance ; for all of these, they say, beget 
profound opinion, which is a rare and singular 
good quality accredited chiefly to gray hairs. yVnd 
if in your abstractions your wife should inquire you 
out the cause, why, tell her that you are per- 
plexed and worried to resolve that cunning puzzle 
of the three cannibal cats. (Laughing) It is a 
rare amusement to a vexed mind so to employ it. 

BEAKS. — You would evade me now with this 
absurd stuff! 

WALTER. — No, but a pretty thing — an exceed- 
ing pretty thing! A thing that sets the rules of 
nature all at odds and contradictions! A queer 
tale ! 

BEAKS.— What villainy is it? What further vil- 
lainy of false wives and trusting husbands so 
abused by cunningness? 

WALTER. — Nothing so, but a strange story, for 



ii6 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

it is related that upon a time there dwelt three vir- 
tuous cats in the self same cellar, which fed upon 
obliging mice and played at many merry tricks — but 
now, as I think, I have forgotten, as the story runs, 
whether these same were christian cats or pagan 
cats, but at a hazard, let us set them down pagan, 
for your christian will accord the virtuous quality 
to none but himself — therefore, to resume, three 
pagan cats — 

BEAKS. — For shame on you to jest with me in 
my extremity, that has need of pity rather ! Can 
this coarse tale restore to me my cheerful home, 
teach me to forget that my seeming virtuous wife 
is but a smutted jade, my child a bastard brat, not 
mine at all? It has no ingredient to teach me this 
forgetfulness, for these are imperious truths en- 
forcing their attention, that all the ear-tickling tales, 
more than the books contain, cannot rub again from 
my life's true history ! 

WALTER. — But since you decline my advice, 
another must be your physician. I have punctured 
this embossed abscess in your vitals, but if you re- 
fuse further to receive my medicines, another must 
heal it. Eve told you what's to do. There is noth- 
ing more plain than what you should ; unless, per- 
chance, it be the goodly horns on that husband 
whose wife consorts with preachers and lay-readers, 
which are a gentry inordinately given to it. Tap 
my father for money ! Tap him, I say ! Tap ! Tap ! 
It is the only thing! Tap him, then! 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 117 

BEAKS. — O a beast's part for a man having legs 
to walk upright rather than a belly to go creeping. 
Money ! And you, his son, that puts this on me ! 

WALTER. — And why not his son as well as 
another if the advice be good? That he is father 
to me is not to me chargeable in the balance sheet 
of just men's judgments, and you do ill to prod 
me with it. It was an action there in which no 
question, either yea or nay, was ever asked me, 
but, willy nilly, I was tumbled headlong into this 
world of thieves for his pleasure's sake, and at- 
testing my unwillingness, I came kicking, for so 
they dragged me feet foremost into the air, howl- 
ing. But no man's good counsel is by his birth 
invalidate, nor is mine by this. And here the case 
stands with you : You take as wife a reputed virtu- 
ous woman, but in truth one fallen under this 
man's hidden practice, and at the time her womb 
large with his getting, which, being arrived, your 
unsuspecting sense receives it as your own that 
prematurely slipped from its warm hiding. Now 
this coming to your knowledge at last, for there 
is no foul or hidden sin of man's but casts some 
light to lead discovery to it, what other thing could 
you with better reason do than go to him, not with 
rough engines of slaughter to take away his life, 
for which you may be hanged, but with the subtler 
instrument of advantage to tap his treasury with? 
Go to him, then; tell him that your ear has an 
abiding sickness that gives you no peace neither 



n8 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

night nor day, that it is an illness admits of no 
remedy but the clapping of the million tongues of 
iron-jawed slander for which you yearn, or the 
jingling music of merry gold for which you pine, 
for my father fears the one much as he loves the 
other. And so, like a thrifty fowl, may you lay by 
feathers for your nest that your soreness shall sleep 
there the easier. Tap him, I say ! Tap ! Tap ! It is 
the only anodine your hurt will relish ! Tap ! Tap ! 

BEAKS. — It is too base a thing! There are those 
injuries that money cannot compensate, nor office, 
advancement or luxury's trappings, make good the 
loss again. 

WALTER. — Why, then, you are another man 
from him I took you for! My halting judgment 
misgave me that you were post-graduate, with de- 
grees and honors, in quite another school, for I 
mistook you for a philosopher of our new type, full 
of seasoned opinion to suit with our more modern 
usages. And now you will play at these distorting 
grimaces, with countenance all awry, at gorging 
down this sugared little pill our new physic pre- 
scribed for your ailing? Tut! Tut! I fear you 
are a non-progressive jay! 

BEAKS. — Is there no virtue in the wide world 
more but every woman, behind her husband's back, 
does it? Is there no virtue? 

WALTER. — Virtue? O it is a pretty word — one 
with a ring of gray-bearded antiquity in it, yet it 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 119 

smells grievously of charnal houses and ivied tombs. 
You do it violence to pluck it out of the grave 
where it lies decently buried. 

BEAKS. — O for a friend now, and not this ban- 
tering jackal, for a trusted friend to lend me fair 
advice what course I might pursue with honor! 

WALTER. — Honor! Are you in the right mind 
to speak of it? Honor, indeed! Why, none but the 
race of madmen chase that will-o'-the-wisp, honor, 
now. Do you fancy yourself a knight? Your clerk's 
pen, a lance? Your ledgers, shields? Your perch- 
ing stool, the round table? and your employer's 
office, Camelot? Why, you'll call for a horse and 
buckler straight ! Come, be a man again ! Catch 
up with your rolling wit and be its master! The 
Amidis and Arthurs are rotted back to foulest- 
smelling earth these thousand years, and their es- 
cutcheons eaten through and through with a certain 
yellowish rust. Gold is the god of our new heraldry, 
and therein lies this difference : In the old time 
the frost-haired father sought out his daughter's 
ravisher with blade in hand for punishment; but 
in this new day you shall see this iniquitous old 
man, this father to one not yet quit the short skirts, 
propped up with pillows at the bar, his covetous 
eye lit with the avaricious spark, sueing the of- 
fender at the law, and instead of steel opposed by 
steel ringing wholesale music for such a quarrel, 
are quirking, quibbling lawyers doing wordy battle 



I20 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

of actions tenable and precedents new to match in 
base commodity his stripling daughter's honor 
robbed. So do they all now, yet you will say no? 
But you'll come to it ! They all come to it ! It is 
in the air like the infectious vomit ! None escape ! 

BEAKS. — O what tool have I been in this man's 
hands ! They played me both ! The little property 
my thrift laid by is, through his advice, lodged in 
this woman's name ! 

WALTER.— Property ! O, there you hit of¥ the 
right note ! It is your very word, and so the wind 
takes up his accustomed quarter! Property! Let 
your memory hold it and your tongue pronounce ! 
It is a buoy will float you in the heaviest seas! 
Property ! Property ! Property ! 

(Enter Julia.) 

JULIA. — Mrs. Beaks will be directly here. 

(Exit Julia.) 

WALTER. — Now am I off like a ghost at cock- 
crow ! There is my cue, but property is yours ! You 
hit it straight ! The old man must disgorge, and 
roundly! So much I can already prophesy! But 
when you embrace the swag, pray do not play me 
ingrate ! Remember me with an attorney's poor 
commission, for bear in mind I set you in the way. 

(Exit Walter.) 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 121 

BEAKS. — Stay, rascal! Stay, I say! You shall 
be present here ! 

WALTER. — (Within) An attorney's percentage 
at the least ! You might well do me handsomer, but 
so much at least! Bear't in mind. 

(Enter Mrs. Beaks.) 

MRS. BEAKS.— Was't Walter Grosscrop that 
ran so hurriedly away? What business brings him 
here? 

BEAKS. — O woman ! Had you been here a mo- 
ment since I would not answer for the act I had 
committed ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— Why, what's the matter? 

BEAKS. — And you dare look me in the face? 
and great, innocent eyes unflinching? O thing, let 
me not stain my tongue to name you rightly ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— What is it you would say to 
me? Tell me plainly! 

BEAKS. — In the very word? 

MRS. BEAKS. — The worst your tongue can 
summon to it ! 

BEAKS.— Then— 

MRS. BEAKS.— Why do you hesitate? 

BEAKS.— For that I lack the art to speak it 
aptly! There is no such word, nor has any yet 
been coined to fit with your baseness! Did I call 
you bawd, wanton — these but signify the doing the 



122 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

act for hire, which is whiteness itself to your be- 
havior ; if adulteress, the greater part is still be- 
hind ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— Speak of it as you can, then! 
I am steeled to any answer! 

BEAKS. — Such boldness should be the yoke-fel- 
low of innocence, but in these degenerate days we 
can trust to no appearance. Our bodily members, 
our over-confident senses, do play us traitor and 
give us the lie in the face where we have most 
assurance. (Re-enter Walter unseen by others.) 
The parent should no longer trust the child nor it 
the parent, neither the wife the husband nor the 
husband wife, lest the sudden-come day unmask 
them together in the brothel ! 

WALTER. — He speaks it rarely, and as it 
should end in a duello rather than in a bag of 
money! He speaks it well! There's never one of 
these ducks pricked home with his own sharpened 
tools but will fall to talking it in this lofty strain. 
But you shall hear him say money soon. It is his 
song's burden. List awhile ! 

BEAKS. — Is't not true he said? Answer me! 
Is't not true? 

MRS. BEAKS.— Is not what true? 

BEAKS.— What he told me? 

MRS. BEAKS.— Who? 

BEAKS.— Young filthiness, there! That sotted 
sewer-fish ! that pox-spotted lizard of houses with 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 123 

red cloth at the window for advertisement ! That 
drunkard, Walter Grosscrop, son to a father com- 
pared to whom his filth is cleanliness ! 

WALTER. — O it is truly said that eavesdrop- 
ping ears hear no good of themselves ! If he will 
slander me now I will tax him the heavier per- 
centage by and by ! If he will bleed my reputation, 
I will bleed his purse ! 

BEAKS. — That fellow who makes of my family 
and affairs his butcher's block to break his diseased 
wit on, and twits me, mocking, when he cuts me 
home for marrying with his father's concubine, for 
so you were! Is't not true? Were you not old 
Grosscrop's commoner that married with me? 

MRS. BEAKS. — And will you believe a man 
such as you say he is, even to hanging your wife's 
honor on his unsupported word, whether he speaks 
the truth? Will you be so rash? 

BEAKS. — But you deny nothing. 

MRS. BEAKS.— It is a lie! 

BEAKS. — It was but your tongue said that! 
What ! not true ! O I have a thousand evidences 
your cunning cannot answer me ! I will give you 
that catechism a cunninger wit than yours might 
stumble on ! How then is it — 

MRS. BEAKS.— I'll deny nothing! It is the 
fair truth he told you! That and more besides! 



124 O^K NEW HERALDRY 

BEAKS.— The fair truth! Black! black truth, 
rather ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— Call it what you will, if only 
truth ! And now that it is out I'm glad it's known 
to you. 

BEAKS. — To me? But it shall be known to 
all the world, shameless one ! I will give it pub- 
licly out! 

WALTER.— A fool if he does it hastily ! An ar- 
rant fool ! Why, 'twould be to throw away the key 
to the golden treasury to do it ! But he'll not do it ! 
I know his mettle better than to think so ill of 
him ! He'll not do it ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— I am past caring! The world's 
worst opinion has no further sting in it for me. 

BEAKS. — A brazen harlot! Do not hope with 
this mannish boldness to outface me and cow me 
into stillness. You shall see results from this, and 
dear ones, too! 

MRS. BEAKS. — I am in such humor that I would 
not oppose with this little finger's poor strength 
the worst action in the catalogue of them all ! Let 
them come! 

BEAKS.— All this! And no blush on the sensi- 
tive cheek! Not for womanhood's sake? 

MRS. BEAKS.— None! 

BEAKS. — O you think me weak, but I will teach 
you. The skulking housedog touched home to the 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 



»^5 



tender quick becomes a lion enraged. There may- 
be bloodshed out of this ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— And that also! 

WALTER^-No! No! The knave could not 
mean that ! That would kill my percentage ere he 
was born, which is the worst death ! But why will 
the knave beat from the point so? 

BEAKS. — O do not hug this flattery to your side 
that I will sleep in quiet under this blot after the 
first storm is past! That such a wrong will end 
in the bantering words and stained names we call 
down upon each other's heads, following in that 
the example of our wedded neighbors, who yelp 
and snarl like quarrelsome dogs at home, and on 
the street, at church or in the public gathering, 
smirk in one another's faces, feigning the smile of 
idiot blandness to counterfeit their true selves. 

WALTER. — He talks now but for efifect's sake! 
You shall see presently if he does not come to it! 
There is that lies heavier in his crop than that 
he now speaks of! I'll forswear all judgment of 
knavish man hereafter if I mistake in this ! List ! 
He's to it again now ! 

BEAKS. — It shall not be so with us! I would 
not bend myself to such hypocrisy! 

MRS. BEAKS.— Nor I either; therefore let 
us make an end. 

BEAKS. — Then must I leave this house — your 
house, and all that's yours. 



126 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

MRS. BEAKS.— As you will, or else I— 
WALTER. — Your house, he says! A husband at 
his ease would have put it, my house ! Here is an 
issue of title raised and the rest stands not far off! 

BEAKS. — And for such a journey, out of my 
necessity, should I need some few odd ends of 
clothes, a coat or two worn throughout elbows in 
Grosscrop's service, trousers with fissured seams 
for the refreshing breezes to blow in at, and some 
few dozen or odd fragment of last year's crumpled 
linen ; this shall furnish my baggage out, the fruit 
of thrift, added to two or three poor, pale silver 
dollars to buy the needed sandwich with. And 
so provisioned shall I set my face to the white sun 
falling below the western hills, and his return for 
a hundred thousand tomorrows shall not see me 
in the accustomed place again. 

WALTER. — O let us weep now for this poor 
man ! Let us weep ! O ! O ! O ! 

BEAKS.— Fetch me these. 

MRS. BEAKS. — I will put these things together 
for you if you wish. 

BEAKS. — Stay a little! When before did you 
so diligently jump to do an errand for me? O 
dutiful wife, that hastes to post her lagging hus- 
band oflf laden with this bountiful liberality! Stay 
a little ! My mind misgives me that did I do it, your 
cunningness would melt down my hard husbanded 
property in the wanton's playful bed ! Stay a lit- 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 127 

tie ! Who is it that is owner now to all this prop- 
erty won by my slaved toil? 

WALTER.— O brave ! He comes to it now ! Let 
her answer that ! Let her answer now ! 

MRS. BEAKS. — It stands to my name's account, 
but by your free consent and wish to have it so? 

BEAKS. — And having it, you would pack me 
off? 

MRS. BEAKS. — It was your expressed wish to 
go. Stay rather, if you choose ! 

BEAKS. — To live upon your bounty and Gross- 
crop's also, while it should please you both to toss 
me alms in pity! Was it not enough that you 
had robbed me of my honor, the privilege of my 
body's lawful issue and all a husband's dues, but 
you must steal away by jugglery my property as 
well? my dear labor's hard results? 

WALTER.— Bravo ! Property! He needs no 
prompter ! 

MRS. BEAKS. — You may accuse me there, but 
not with justice. I never wasted it ! 

BEAKS. — You played your cards prettily! You 
and this crafty red fox, your companion in it! No 
juggling journeyman that on the green cloth strikes 
amazement into the dumb crowd by the lightness 
of the trick, but your deceit could send profitably 
to school again in his own art. But you shall not 
win by it; you shall yield up ever penny to the 
last copper! 



128 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

MRS. BEAKS.— What shall I yield up? 

BEAKS. — Money ! Property ! Everything ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— I took nothing of yours. 

BEAKS. — Return me my effects again or I will 
drag you before the law and wrest them from you 
by the violent arm of writs and processes ; I'll un- 
mask your hidden sins and hold them up before the 
astonished world, that no man shall longer trust 
his own wife in anything! I will prove it clearly 
how you plotting and conniving thieves have cun- 
ningly robbed me of all that is mine by right! 

MRS. BEAKS.— What is it I robbed of you? 
That sin at least I am not guilty of. 

BEAKS.— My property! My lands! My prop- 
erty! 

MRS. BEAKS. — I've carried none away. 

BEAKS. — Deliver them to me, then! 

MRS. BEAKS.— Go to your lands! I do not hin- 
der you ! It needs no force to take this from me 
but my free will. 

BEAKS. — My deeds! My necessary documents! 

MRS. BEAKS.— You shall have them. 

BEAKS, — Then to a notary at once ! To a no- 
tary, then ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— No, but hear me first ! 

BEAKS. — You will not do it ! I knew you would 
not do it ! 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 129 

MRS. BEAKS.— You shall have all. 

BEAKS. — Let's to the notary, then ! Come, let^s 
to the notary! 

MRS. BEAKS.— Go on! I will follow you! 

(Exeunt Beaks and Mrs. Beaks.) 

WALTER. — (Advancing) I marvel now whether 
he'll not force her into the payment, too, of this 
notary's costs who shall draft these deeds between 
them. It would break his heart were he to pay it 
in the full, and would put him to more worry to 
lose it so than another bastardy committed upon 
his wife ! What a reader am I grown of these 
dog's men that people the world of late, that I 
could fix this dastard's quality so truly ! Yet it was 
a slave's part in him so to abuse the woman and 
call me vile names. Well, when he taps my father, 
then am I after him to squeeze my commission out, 
and 'twill be double what it was had he dealt more 
decently by her. 

(Exit Walter.) 



i3o OUR NEW HERALDRY 



SCEIS^E IV 



OFFICE OF THE DAILY BREAKWIND 

(Quillet and Wattles at work.) 

QUILLET.— I could not spare it, Wattles! I 
could not let you that space a famished flea might 
stand upright in, if it were to save your neck from 
the rope, a death you fear greatly, and with reason, 
for you'll yet come to it; be content with that. 

WATTLES.— With hanging? 

QUILLET. — No, but with no room to show your 
wares in ; I can spare you none. 

WATTLES.— None ! And for this use? 

QUILLET. — I cannot; not for love, which is 
no longer current coin, nor for hire, which in this 
new world has greater moving properties. There's 
no inch of space for your use, but every thumb's 
breadth in the whole paper shall be charged full 
to splitting with this purgation I must put Gross- 
crop to ; for if I do not send him sick to bed with 
it, I must myself there. 

WATTLES.— And you will crowd my little thing 
of feather-weights out so? You will do it? and to 
this sturdy child of my taxed fancy engendered of 
a pin's head of dry facts, to make of it such round- 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 131 

ness and sleek proportions that fat Cupid were but 
lean to it? Gad, and I never wrote better since my 
hand came to pen to do it with ! I burnt upon it 
two gallons of oil last night ! I paced the floor, 
too, a quarter at the stretch, and half the world 
snoring! And you will treat it so? You will give 
it no poor corner where to be seen ; and seen, read ; 
and read, admired, digested and properly taken 
home? You will do it? 

QUILLET. — We have no space for it nor for 
any other thing than for this war on Grosscrop, and 
to that end all others must be servant. 

WATTLES. — War! A play at frozen ox cards! 
I call not that war where no blood is spilt, no blow 
struck, no man felled, no rib broken, no jaw cracked, 
no ring, no gong, no anything, but words, words, 
words, and tame ones, too ! War, indeed ! 

QUILLET. — Yet it is war, and I, as it were, a 
power belligerent and you and all of those I em- 
ploy to it are my dependencies, and Grosscrop our 
common foe. In the little world within these walls 
I am that thing they call the government in the 
greater world without; for as the government in 
its necessity does tax each citizen to its defense, 
bidding the artisan, scholar, doctor, lawyer, quit 
their several callings to take up the accoutrements 
and tools of war, so do I bid you in this. There- 
fore you must leave your prize rings now, your up- 
per and nether cuts, your bastinados and what not. 



'3 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 



and dash me off a score or more of pointed squids 
to prick old Grosscrop's leathern jacket through. 

WATTLES.— Not I, so it please you! Whatl 
And you would tempt genius out of his true chan- 
nel, canoned in towering rock, to take his course 
up instead through spreading flats and muddy 
marshes? You would pluck me from this nobleness 
to set me up at that meanness? make me no more 
the historian to royal sports, but instead a petty 
scribbler of political bombast, that is compounded 
of three parts of damned villainy and seven others 
of frothy fustian, with no poor grain of truth mixed 
in for plain decency's sake? Were my back more 
supple at bending it than were Jacob's ringed 
wands, I could not so stoop from high to low ; I 
cannot do it! Contempt of it will not suffer me I 
You must bid me to some calling more to my liking, 
or I am a pick else, hung high and dry in a frugal 
farmer's winter store. If you will, bid me beat the 
man, I'll do it ! Bid me beat this Grosscrop that 
his life may hang upon a thread, and I'd as lief do 
it as take breath in ! But to stick pen in putrid ink 
on his or your or any other man's account, there 
you shall hear me cry — halt, and no budging ! Bid 
me beat the man ! 

QUILLET. — It would answer nothing to beat 
him. Take care you do him no such violence, \V"at- 
tles ! Take care of it ! 

WATTLES. — Gad. and I shall not answer that. 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 133 

Let him beware how he cross me ! Let him beware 
of it! Were I his insurer I had as soon see him 
finger a she-lion's sore teat at cub-time as to cross 
a man in my humor, with grit and mettle at com- 
mand to do it! I shall not answer what the sight 
of him may provoke me to ! That I shall not ! And 
good counsel whisper me in the ear, it were better 
for you both you should not meet! It were better 
you avoid this Grosscrop lest the sight of him stir 
you to it, saith good counsel. But I will not swear 
cold counsel always rules hot man ! And so I warn 
Grosscrop of it! 

QUILLET.— Do him no hurt. Wattles ! It would 
spoil all so. But here comes now my haunting 
plague again who with thirteen fellows of his kind, 
daily put me on the rack of torture. (Enter a Con- 
tributor with scroll.) I marvel now what cun- 
ning plan for man's redemption or the death of 
earthly rulers brings him here. 

CONTRIBUTOR.— (Unfolding scroll.) An 
idea, Mr. Editor! A most singular, rare, fortunate 
idea ! Here I have it ! And the more so, that it is 
opportune, and hits existing ills pat, and — 

QUILLET.— I am in great haste, sir ! Be brief, 
I beg you ! 

CONTRIBUTOR.— Forty seconds, Mr. Editor! 
I ask you but forty seconds ! And will wager that 
you daily waste a hundredfold its length of time! 
But you shall waste none on this! unless it be 



134 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

waste in forty brief seconds to garner that knowl- 
edge in your philosophers spent their lives for and 
yet missed it ! Here I have it condensed, refined, 
and evaporated, simmered and boiled down, as it 
were, to thirty-two pages, and will read you it ! 

QUILLET.— Pray do not read it! But let me 
at once tell you, we are crowded full and can give 
it no space. This, with regret, let me tell you. 

CONTRIBUTOR.— O your editor will ever say 
so ! I have not spent thirty years in literature not 
to learn that! But here is matter that commands 
pause ! A region in the diamond zone were but 
glittering dirt to the riches of truth sparkling here ! 
Come, you shall hear all ! 

QUILLET. — Not now, my learned sir ! Not now, 
if you please, sir! 

CONTRIBUTOR.— The idea struck me o' night 
time as I lay abed, and I jumped up then and there 
to develop it and make of it this thing. Mark you 
now, a word of explanation ! Then to begin, I call 
it the "Dimity Plan," and you shall marvel why I 
use that word "Dimity," and none other, but there 
lies a little mysticism — a little coaxing on of the 
mind to inquiry, if you please, the which I may 
as well here explain as elsewhere, for it is noted — 

QUILLET.— No! No! No! Let me bid you 
good day! 

CONTRIBUTOR.— Here is it shall recast your 
machinery of government to make of its complex- 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 



'35 



ity and cursed cumbrousness a model of simplicity, 
and save you, after transition, all propelling en- 
gines, for, like the automaton in a fairy tale, it shall 
be self-acting and self-executing! 

QUILLET.— (Aside) Gad ! That it should exe- 
cute him, too, that first devised it! 

CONTRIBUTOR.— There shall you not have 
your governors, your presidents, your privy coun- 
cillors, 3^our frowning judges, your — 

QUILLET.— Well ! Well ! Is there no remedy? 

CONTRIBUTOR.— Here shall every man be 
master unto himself and peace and plenty sit smil- 
ing! 

QUILLET. — Sir, let me prevail with you! To- 
morrow you shall have ten hours, if you will, but 
today — why, today I can no more but bid you a 
hearty good day, and so leave me now ! 

CONTRIBUTOR.— Tomorrow? 

QUILLET.— Tomorrow. 

CONTRIBUTOR.— Tomorrow let it be, then, 
barring death and accident. Mark you there, I say 
barring death and accident, for I am believer in — 

QUILLET.— There! There! Let us make an 
end ! 

CONTRIBUTOR.— As you will, sir. 

(Exit Contributor.) 

QUILLET.— Gad ! What a life would this be 
were there no tomorrows to put these frenzied fools 



136 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

off to! (Re-enter Contributor.) But, Judge of 
Israel, he returns again ! 

CONTRIBUTOR.— There lies here a cardinal 
point that I fain would have you sleep out the night 
upon, to the end that — 

QUILLET.— No! No! but go now! 

CONTRIBUTOR.— Well, tomorrow, then ! What 
fools are men ! What arrogant fools that will ever 
set Truth pleading at deaf ears for audience when 
she would counsel only to their good ! , 

(Exit Contributor.) 

QUILLET. — How persistent the knave is ! 

(Enter Boy.) 

BOY. — Grosscrop comes! Your old enemy 
Grosscrop, and's now at the very door! 

QUILLET and WATTLES.— Phillip Grosscrop? 

BOY. — The very man, and from his look, as I 
passed him, is more mad than a tiger vexed! His 
eyes blaze redder than his beard ! 

QUILLET. — My good pen begins to cut him 
home ! Well, his reception here will be both hot 
and cold, as he desires it! He'll find it so! 

WATTLES. — But gad, lads ! He's a man weighs 
two hundred pounds and odd ! 'Twere the sheerest 
madness here to wait him that he might at leisure 
maul us, while we have those legs can outrun his! 
Discretion was ever valor's better part, and is to- 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 



'37 



day ! Let's out of this, and leave the walls for him 
to quarrel with ! , 

QUILLET. — What you slave ! You will not run ! 

WATTLES. — Not while swift walking will as 
well answer! I will not run but will take such a 
speedy pace up with swiftness enough to carry my 
body out of harm's way, and account it the part of 
valor to do it. Your valiant man does valiantly re- 
treat, and history records how Hercules did seven 
times retreat before the Nemian Lion, and royal 
kings do oft retreat before the front of meaner foes 
to come better on agam (Hides behind curtain), 
and so now do I retreat that from my hiding here 
I may spring out a lurking lion when the time's 
ripe. You shall hear from me when the time is fit ! 

QUILLET. — O you coward's bastard! Let me 
hear that word valor on your lips again, and I'll 
beat you for it as I would a yelping hound ! Let 
me hear your pigeon's gall speak more of boldness 
or of testy fights ! O such a knave was not begot 
but by his coward father's deviltry to steal upon 
some woman sleeping, for waked nature never made 
conjunction to breed such curs! 

(Enter Grosscrop !) 

GROSSCROP. — I would speak a word with you. 
Quillet. 

QUILLET. — Sir, you've spoken seven already. 



138 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

GROSSCROP.— No, but 'tis an affair of busi- 
ness. 

QUILLET. — Why, then, your business is done; 
it is but to speak a word. But off with this ! I can 
guess what follows, and save you pains, for you 
shall have but your pains for the trouble of it. 

GROSSCROP.— What follows, as you think? 

QUILLET. — Something after this order: I shall 
hear you say you are touched and stung by some- 
thing the Breakwind reported on you, which you 
will prove is but a calumny, and ask firmly a re- 
traction of it, which I as firmly will refuse; and so 
your business ends there, in threats and angry 
looks, both ways. This, with the thousand details 
filled, is it. I play out a part six times weekly in 
these little sittings with angry men, but they change 
nothing, nor will your business here change it. 

GROSSCROP. — I call not that business; mine is 
not of its class. 

QUILLET.— What, then, is it? 

GROSSCROP. — I would speak privately with 
you. 

QUILLET.— On what matter? 

GROSSCROP.— That you shall hear. But come 
apart with me ! But on this assurance first, that 
I bring the olive branch of gentle peace, if you will 
accept of it. Come with me, then. 

OUILLET. — The devil in the cellar is no worse 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 139 

a fellow than the devil in the sun. I will go with 
you. 

(Quillet and Grosscrop go apart.) 

GROSSCROP. — I take you for a man of sense 
and so will speak to you. 

QUILLET. — Never yet have I been purchased 
of a compliment, and will not now ! Some fools 
there are, I know, will take the breath of flattery 
which is but air, and foul air, too, for legal tender, 
but as for me it is unmarketable stuff that in my 
good warehouse — though it were a mile long — I 
would give no room to. 

GROSSCROP.— We could and ought to be of 
service — one to other. 

QUILLET.— Well? 

GROSSCROP. — And cease this ruinous fight be- 
tween us. 

QUILLET. — O you mistake there — it is stock in 
trade to me; but let me hear you through. 

GROSSCROP.— We are fellow-townsmen— 
neighbors both ; our interests are as one if we would 
let them. That wind that blows me good as well 
might do the like to you and harm none. 

QUILLET.— This is fair speech, but from the 
point, to which I beg you to come at once ; if your 
fortune be good let me have half interest with you, 
or if bad, why hold it then in reversion to my heirs 



I40 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 



when I am gone, and give me none. I smell fodder, 
or do you only pipe me a tune now of corn rigs? 

GROSSCROP.— I take you for an honorable 
man, yet one awake to your own proper interests, 
as I to mine, and all men else of judgment are to 
theirs. 

QUILLET.— But you beat shy of the point ! It 
is the point ! Come to it ! 

GROSSCROP.— You are blunt, I see, and for that 
I like you none the less; well, the point lies here — 
I would have the Breakwind's good support, but 
not without reward to you for so good a service. 
But tell me now — intending no impertinence — I am 
too bold, I fear! 

QUILLET.— No, but speak, and leave this boy's 
bashfulness; I am no blushing maid nor you a 
stammering youth. 

GROSSCROP.— And this heavy debt hangs yet 
upon your paper here? 

QUILLET. — O certain, and in these exceeding 
tight times ! 

GROSSCROP.— Go to, then; with this debt 
lifted— 

QUILLET.— It is excellent! 

GROSSCROP,— And yourself lodged in as col- 
lector here of this rich port, which would then be 
within my gift to give — 

QUILLET.— O this— this— it leaves me no 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 141 

words — O that coy goddess, Fortune, knocks merry 
at my gate now, and thank God I am home to un- 
bar to her! 

GROSSCROP. — And your friends besides — 

QUILLET. — Friends, too ! Here is a royal 
prince, a prince royal among lesser men ! 

(Grosscrop and Quillet continue to converse apart.) 

WATTLES.— (Within) Be they gone, boy? Be 
they gone? 

BOY.— That they be. 

WATTLES.— Then will I out of this. (Comes 
out.) O blest discretion, I never knew thee till to- 
day ! I shall think the more of myself hereafter 
for it! Did see the victory, boy? Did see me 
conquer? 

BOY. — I saw nothing but your running away 
and hiding at the first smell of danger. 

WATTLES.— Gad, I did it, though! I never 
would a thought it, yet I did it ! I forget what an- 
cient sage it was that used oft to say, who con- 
quers self achieves greater victory than who wins 
a battle, but the words fit well with my present 
temper, for such conquering did I a moment since. 
Did see me conquer, lad? 

BOY. — If to hide be to conquer, then I saw you. 

WATTLES.— O I feel a kind of pride in it that 
I am made so ! That calm discretion and bold 
courage are so gently mixed in me ! I had not be- 
lieved it without this test! 



1^2 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

BOY. — Nor had I believed you had been such 
a coward until I saw you slink. 

WATTLES. — There be a boy's unthinking speech 
for you ! It is every ruffian's and braggart's part to 
fall to at a common brawl, but 'tis a man of quality 
and true courage that governs these motions to 
the even tenor of fair judgment, and though the gen- 
eral world do oft set him down for cowardice, still 
will every judicious one hail him for a brave man. 
Why, look you, lad, how this thing stands with me. 
Here am I panting hot to lay hands on this Gross- 
crop to fetch him grievous punishment home that 
could as well fatally end to him, bearing in mind 
my chafed spirit and fiery mettle, that prompt me 
to it ; and, this while, stands reason at my elbow to 
counsel me, saying, "Avoid him ! Avoid this man, 
lest you put too great violence on him and so undo 
yourself." Now which of these two shall I obey? 
Which should your man of quality? Why, he 
should obey reason ! Reason should be with him, 
for if he has not reason with him, then is he no man 
but beast only! And so I did, and am proud to be 
so governed ; for when brute instinct said, "at him," 
reason whispered me, "Abide, Wattles ! abide !" and 

so I did abide. 

(Enter Quillet.) 

QUILLET. — The wind stands now from a new 
quarter! I've grossly been misled, and must undo 
all ! (To Wattles) What ! And dares the dog from 
his kennel venture so quickly out? But no more 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 143 

of that! Grosscrop, once rightly known, is the 
prince of royal fellows, and the Breakwind lends 
him good support hereafter! I was deceived egre- 
giously in the man, and thank not those insinuat- 
ing jays that led me first to it ! That one's a rascal 
truly who sees the error of his way and will not 
speedily make amends! But I'm no rascal, there- 
fore will I make Grosscrop fair amends ! 

WATTLES.— What sudden fit is this? 

QUILLET. — Why, his portly roundness in front 
which I mistook to be but his stomach's grossness, 
is the largeness of his heart instead that swells out 
the girt of his goodly vest ! O ! he is a big-hearted 
and a proper man ! and for every spiteful and cut- 
ting thing I ever writ of him, I will now ten pretty 
ones to offset against it ! Where is your stuff there 
on prize-rings? 

WATTLES.— My little thing of feather-weights? 

QUILLET. — So do you name it. Let it go in, 
for there is now room for it, and more to spare. 

WATTLES. — God bless this Grosscrop ! God 
bless the man if this be so ! I no longer hold spite 
against him, but will give him my good right hand ! 
God bless him ! 

QUILLET. — Hunt me out that lunatic writer, 
too, with his bale of written trash ; it will in, and 
serve as food for fools, which, for the best part, 
men are ! 



144 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

WATTLES.— My little thing of feather-weights ! 
My fancy's darling ! O it is a brave thing ! 

(Exit Wattles and Boy.) 

QUILLET. — Now must I stir me up to some feel- 
ing of contrition to write sweetly of this man. 
Would I had a hundred such foes that could judge 
my worth as he does ! But here comes one that's 
not as welcome now as he had been before. How 
does Monsieur Honesty? 

(Enter Playfair.) 

PLAYFAIR. — If you mean me, why I am well 
enough, though a little overworked to do this task 
you set me. But now it is in a fashion done, and 
have it here. 

QUILLET.— What task is it I set you? My 
short memory recalls none. 

PLAYFAIR.— You remember well! Why, this 
taxing I was to lay on Grosscrop and avouch to it I 
And here it is, struck fairly well off, if one may 
judge his own handiwork. 

QUILLET. — I asked you none! 

PLAYFAIR.— O that you did! And urged me 
further in it than I would. But why treat me now 
to this pretty flow of humorous spirit all unasked? 
I am in haste ! When I am more at leisure, give 
me then your wit and I will laugh, and cry, ''Bravo! 
Bravo !" and "How clever 'tis !" But here, have 
this! 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 145 

QUILLET. — I have no use for it! 

PLAYFAIR.— What? 

QUILLET. — Does it name Grosscrop angel? 
Laud his white virtues to the marble skies? Call 
him that nobleman of nature's molding, raised by 
Providence to our hand, to set the wronged world 
right, and to stand out a model to ambitious strip- 
lings to shape their courses to? Does it do these 
things? 

PLAYFAIR. — It does not, and you well know it 
fixes quite a different brand upon him, if the ad- 
vised people will receive it. 

QUILLET. — Then I will have none of it! 

PLAYFAIR.— Come ! Come! The wittiest wit 
is dryness to those ears that are not tuned for it, 
and mine are not to this. 

QLHLLET. — Let me deal with you plainly! Then 
must you know I am chief lieutenant now to Gross- 
crop to make him senator, and you shall hear me 
speak as prettily hereafter of him as ever I did ill 
before. Why, he is a most marvelous man, full of 
the darlingest good qualities, as honest, truthful, 
brave, learned, practical, considerate of his friends, 
generous to a fault, liberal, full of — O I am so fresh- 
ly come to it that I must study his virtues out that 
my tongue may with more readiness name them ! 
But 'tis true as I have said. My little yawl is 
hitched now to his stout bark, and will float to 
harbor with it, and a plenteous harbor, too, as I be- 



146 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

lieve. Come, you shall ride with me, if you will, 
and it's good-bye then to drudging poverty. 

PLAYFAIR. — It is past belief! You only jest 
with me. 

QUILLET.— Why should I so? And to speak it 
plainly and with honesty, too, he is fit man enough 
for the place, and good as any that are like to come 
to it. Why, then, should I spew at him when my 
profit runs with his? 

PLAYFAIR. — But those ones among the people 
that trust to you for guidance, what answer can 
you make them? 

QUILLET.— Answer! O it is a droll thing! 
Answer? O your unmixed simpleness gives me a 
sort of fondness of you ! Answer? It is rare! But 
answer me you this: Am I not leader to them? 
Am I not that libel on God's good handiwork they 
call labor leader? Am I not it? 

PLAYFAIR. — You are so thought to be. 

QUILLET. — There are you answered then, for 
these dull ones know nothing but to follow their 
approved leader up, yelling themselves to hoarse- 
ness in his applause. Why it stands so with them, 
that if your labor leader does but void water against 
a barn-door, his followers all will tear the very air 
to shout their pent applause of such a wise and 
thoughtful action. They are a pack of restless and 
uneasy hounds that know no other thing in the 
hunt than to take up that bark, or cry, or course, 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 147 

or g-ait their leader sets them to. 'Tis easy answer- 
ing these. 

PLAYFAIR.— But not long to hold yourself 
their leader, so treacherously to deal with them. 

QUILLET. — What care I then for leadership 
when I no longer need the aid of it? Let me advise 
you here. Set down this constant star in your mar- 
iner's chart and steer by it as a fixed and changeless 
one : Your ambitious leader to base and ignorant 
men, does use them only as a ladder whereby he 
mounts, and when he overtops it, gaining the surer 
ground above, he thinks no more upon the ladder 
but quits it there, as craftsmen forsake the tools 
they have no longer need of. 

PLAYFAIR. — You've often talked to me before 
in such spirit, but, as I thought, more from a fond- 
ness of speech than to make it a rule of action. I 
am amazed to see you do it, and can scarce believe 
you are more than in sport. 

QUILLET. — It is your pitiful honesty that has 
a trick of drawing me on to speak plainly with you, 
that I would not do to others. But be persuaded 
now to quit it. Lend your help with me to elect 
this man and you shall have a fat office for it, for 
he shall have a dozen score of them to pass among 
his friends, as they do tarts at evening parties. Put 
money in your purse, and when it's bursting full 
and we are older, we'll strut and walk about on 
canes, like pompous and respected citizens, full of 
wise observations and virtuous moralizing. Why, 



148 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

there shall no beggar woman ask us a penny on 
the streets but we shall fall to moralizing it, in- 
stancing our own youths, how, when we were 
young, we labored such-and-such long hours a day, 
and received but such-and-such small wages for it, 
and with it bought fair education, fed, clothed and 
kept ourselves, and lent support to such-and-such 
numbers of dependent and bed-ridden relatives, and 
the breathless crowd shall stare reverently at us, 
reporters shall take home our very words and print 
them, and young men ponder them over in garrets, 
marveling why it is no longer as it was. But who 
is this in haste? 

(Enter Mrs. Playfair.) 

MRS. PLAYFAIR.— O my husband, my poor 
husband ! We are ruined ! And for all your work ! 

PLAYFAIR.— Good heavens! What's the mat- 
ter? 

MRS. PLAYFAIR.— The officer! O the officer! 

PLAYFAIR.— What, what of him? 

MRS. PLAYFAIR.— He's at our house and with 
writs and papers and I know not what, to take our 
furniture all and household things away with him ! 
O it's a shame ! A shame ! And we tried so hard 1 

PLAYFAIR. — On whose account is he? 

MRS. PLAYFAIR.— Old Bottoms! That old 
usurer Bottoms, that you made the mortgage to 
last winter when Moll was sick to pay the doctor 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 149 

off! O, it's shameful, and the disgrace, too, to be 
thrown out of our own house ! 

PLAYFAIR.— Do not take it so to heart. I will 
see Bottoms and 

AIRS. PLAYFAIR.— It will be useless labor. I 
was myself already to him, and begged him as I 
hope never again to beg of beast, and he could an- 
swer me nothing but "interest," "per cent.," 
"money," "spendthrift people," and the like, and so 
he left me, growling! 

PLAYFAIR. — There! there! It is not so seri- 
ous ! A few odd ends, more or less ! 

MRS. PLAYFAIR.— And the chair your mother 
gave you, and IMoU's little bed that I thought to 
keep for her when she should grow up ! Even these 
he will not spare ! 

PLAYFAIR. — Has he already gone then? 

MRS. PLAYFAIR.— No, but waits me now at 
the house, for I begged him an hour's time that I 
might see my stepfather, hoping he might let us 
the money. 

PLAYFAIR.— No ! No! You must not think of 
that ! 

MRS. PLAYFAIR.— But I've been to him, and 
that is the bitterest yet, for when I asked him it, he 
scowled and said it served me well for marrying 
with a two-penny fellow who hoped to win a living 
out of his scribbled nonsense that none were fools 
enough to read, and chided me so that I had not 



150 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

taken his good advice to marry the brewer's fat son 
instead. O, to think that I should hear my husband 
spoken of so, and to my own face ! 

PLAYFAIR.— Well ! Well ! I will only laugh at 
that. 

QUILLET. — (Going) — Pardon me, sir and lady, 
if you will, but I am in the greatest hurry, and so I 
bid you both good-day! 

MRS. PLAYFAIR.— (To Quillet)— Excuse me. 
sir, and do not think me bold to do it ! I know my 
husband would not, but you two have been as 
friends so long, you know his honesty and his 
worth that will repay it again, therefore help him 
now in this, and the time shall come when you shall 
be more than glad you helped so good a man. 

QUILLET. — This is so sudden ! Were it any 

other time but this ! Money is of late so tight, so 

very tight ! It grieves me to deny so good a man ! 

Tomorrow, if you will, and I'll try what I can ! O, 

how bitter 'tis to see a friend's distress and have no 

power to succor him ! Tomorrow, if you will, but 

do not hope too much ! This indeed is food for 

thought ! 

(Exit Quillet.) 

PLAYFAIR. — I would you had not asked him it. 

MRS. PLAYFAIR.— Dear! Dear! How flinty 
are the hearts of men, and this rough world, how 
harsh and bitter to them that will not dance its 
music! 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 151 

PLAYFAIR. — You are my brave and trusted 
wife and I your husband. This thing that frets you 
now is but a trifle, looked at rightly. Let us brave 
it in a joyful mood, as we often talked we'd meet 
misfortune, and have done before. 

MRS. PLAYFAIR.— O, and to think how you 
have worked ! 

(Exeunt both.) 



SCENE V 



SCENE IN BEAKS' HOUSE 

(Enter Beaks and Mrs. Beaks.) 
BEAKS. — (Holding deeds) — O, to dream of 
patching up such shame in the exchange of a few 
poor bits of scribbled paper ! (Hands them to her.) 
Take them from my sight or they will strike me 
blind ! O, miserable stuff! Shame will not suffer me 
to touch them ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— Then shall I tear them into 
shreds and let the desert's rankest weeds eat up 
these lands their only dwellers there. (Offers to 
tear them.) 

BEAKS.— (Stopping her)— No! No! Do not tear 
them. (Puts deeds in his pocket.) Let them lie in 
here for what future use my poor, oppressed mind 



152 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

cannot now make out. I will forget them if I can ! 
O, how could you do me such a wrong? , 

MRS. BEAKS.— Leave all this pass! I could 
summon up a lame excuse to do indifferent service 
for me, but leave it pass ! 

BEAKS.— And the child, too, that fondly I fan- 
cied to be my own! Last week her little babbling 
tongue struck out the word "papa" in a clear note, 
and three times over she repeated it. I seized her 
up and told her she should have a hobbyhorse, and 
then the pretty fool tried to speak that word, too! 
Yet, it's well you yielded my deeds up ! It's well 
you did it! 

MRS. BEAKS.— Leave off all this! Address 
yourself to what is to be done between us. 
„BEAKS. — And to think that I can say no more I 
have a home, but must be as the wandering and tim- 
id hare, chased from his comfortable burrow by un- 
dermining and intruding floods, for I no more shall 
sit of evenings at the warm fireside, with feet upon 
the comfortable stool, drowsily reading the day's 
gossip in the evening paper, while the hoar frost 
without, and the shrill northern blasts, write fan- 
tastic pictures of ferns and tropical foliage upon the 
pane, adding to the warmth and coziness within ! 
But it's well you gave me up the deeds without pub- 
licity! How could you have done me such a 
wrong? 

MRS. BEAKS. — My sin was older than my mar- 
riage. 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 



'53 



BEAKS. — But 'twas a continuing one. 

MRS. BEAKS. — As yours was, too, and is. 

BEAKS.— Mine? What is there of mine? 

MRS. BEAKS.— The like that I committed. 

BEAKS. — Do not banter words with me to in- 
flame me up again ! 

MRS. BEAKS. — Yet you have sinned as I have; 
all the gross proportions of my offense sit evenly 
with yours. Yet I do not value that. I do not speak 
it in excuse of me. 

BEAKS. — I've done no such sin. I'm no man's 
wife. 

MRS. BEAKS. Nor husband either to any 
woman? 

BEAKS. — What is this jest? It ill becomes a 
fallen one to jest with him she wronged. 

MRS. BEAKS.— I do not jest, but you in jest told 
me a true story once, and thought it such a jest that 
I, your wife, should be moved to laugh at it. In 
jest you told me truthfully how it was that long 
ago, you once deceived an Italian girl who lived by 
your father's house; how that her dark eyes and 
rounded girlish bosom stirred your amorous love, 
until by false protests of honorable purposes and 
promises vowed only to be broken again before they 
scarce were spoken, you won her heart, and with 
it, all her body's poor belongings ; you told me then, 
how in dalliance you played with her daily in a se- 
cret grove near by, until her womb grew large, and 



'54 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 



then you left her, tiring. All this you told to me, 
and further, how to hide her true condition, she 
married hastily with a stupid lad that before she 
has put of¥ for you. This much you told me as a 
pretty jest your wife should laugh to hear. 

BEAKS. — But I am a man and you a woman. 
Such things, although confessedly wrong in anyone, 
are in a measure licensed to a man yet young, and 
none take note of them in him. There is this differ- 
ence ever between man and woman. 

MRS. BEAKS. — Yet his sin is like to hers, and 
each is like the other, heinous both. 

BEAKS. — There is a difference. 

MRS. BEAKS.— I see none! If this fell blot upon 
her life seals up fair pity's eye against her, so that 
the whole world will point the silent finger, leaving 
her no alternative but biting shame, why then 
should not the like be done on him, her co-laborer 
in it, also? By what just law does she the heavier 
punishment undergo and he the lighter? 

BEAKS. — I will not answer this. It is woman's 
imposed charge to keep her true virginity and guard 
her untouched womb in cleanliness for her lawful 
children's mold. 

MRS. BEAKS.— But of the father who is to be- 
get these children, what should his behaviour? 

BEAKS. — The soiled woman, be she maid or 
wife, should forego all offices else but the harlot's — 
a despised vessel to break man's over-teeming iusts 
upon ! 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 



'55 



MRS. BEAKS.— And what the function then of 
your soiled man? Find out his place for me beside 
this other one ! 

BEAKS. — Man's build is outward, woman's en- 
cased within ; the marly vapor falling on the moun- 
tain's up-raised top, runs oflf and leaves no stain, 
but in the walled hollow of the ground, a conta- 
gious pool it lingers. I will not further talk of this. 
I am moved to wonder that you can command this 
boldness, having done what you have done. Let 
us to our business, for I shall not rest but to have 
divorce of you. 

MRS. BEAKS. — As you will; as for me it needs 
not that formality. 

BEAKS. — A legal divorce between us, quietly 
done and quickly! 

MRS. BEAKS. — "Speedily obtained and without 
publicity," as the lawyers in the card say. 

BEAKS. — You can be facetious, too, but I am 
sick at heart ! You'll not resist my reasonable di- 
vorce and by advertisement call down further 
shame on me? 

MRS. BEAKS.— No. 

BEAKS. — Nor fight in court to reclaim my 
property? But that were useless. In law the er- 
ring wife takes nothing at divorcement. 

MRS. BEAKS. — Nor in this case shall she ask it. 

BEAKS. — You shall have for your own and your 



156 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

child's support what sum your deceased father left 
you. I lay no claim to it. 

MRS. BEAKS.— My father left? 

BEAKS. — Why do you make a question of that? 
Did he not leave it so? 

MRS. BEAKS.— Let us be truthful here. He left 
me nothing. t 

BEAKS.— Nothing? 

MRS. BEAKS.— No. He was a bankrupt; his 
importuning creditors dogged him to the grave and 
barked upon it after. 

BEAKS. — O, your disturbed sense turns fixedly 
back to falsehood as the needle to the pole! Why 
will you tell me this untruth that my own knowl- 
edge can disprove again? For how came this sum 
that at your marriage was settled on you, if not 
your father's? And where's the money for your 
course at school, not a little, and your keeping, too, 
during your orphaned years? You told me many 
times it was your father left it. 

MRS. BEAKS.— And lying I told you so. These 
came, not from my father, but from my father's 
friend, who since is friend to you. 

BEAKS.— Who do you say? 

MRS. BEAKS. — From Grosscrop, in whose debt 
I lie for that I am ! My father at the last committed 
me to his care, and in such way he cared for me. 

BEAKS. — O, truth is stranger to your tongue 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 



'57 



that would slander itself in a lie rather than speak 
the truth to advantage ! I saw in the court the very 
records, ribboned and sealed, to attest their verity, 
appointing him the guardian of your effects ! 

MRS. BEAKS. — It was a feigned thing, done 
from the first for deceit's sake, though by his family 
and the world accredited true. 

BEAKS. — What an artist are you to paint 
that blacker that was already black beyond com- 
parison ! You will tell me straight that you quit 
your mother's milk to take up harlotry for profes; 
sion ! O, precocious stripling, that could so steal 
the march on watchful nature as to set her laws at 
nothing and cheat her ladyship into discharge of a 
debt not yet due ! Let scientists that bore at paper 
books take note ! 

MRS. BEAKS. — You judge me harshly! I was, 
from the beginning, unfit to oppose my unschooled 
skill against this stout gentleman's experience. He 
overcame me to his pleasure at the first by force 
and fraudulence. 

BEAKS. — O, now the excuse! It is on the bill, 
I see, and will have its turn before the curtain ! 
Come, the excuse now ! Out with it, too ! 

MRS. BEAKS. — I intended no excuse, and make 
none of the things I said to you. I could frame one 
up to do indifferent service for me, but that I will 
not. I was not guiltless, either. 

BEAKS. — Remarkable admission ! 



158 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

MRS. BEAKS. — It was your words that led me 
off a little. What more remains between us? 

BEAKS. — O, then, let us get our bearing, whither 
we have drifted from it ! First the divorce, then the 
deeds, then — 

MRS. BEAKS. — No, if my memory serves, the 
deeds went first in your catalogue of it. 

BEAKS.— Well, that way, then! First the deeds; 
that is already done. You dealt in fairness there. 
Second, the divorce, which is to do, and third — 
third — I will set the third down dinner, and so like 
a scurvy rhymester ring out a pretty alliteration — 
deeds, divorce and dinner. Let the dinner be 
brought in, for my stomach cries out for it. I will 
drown my troubles in a pudding. 

MRS. BEAKS.— Then I will leave you, and let 
your merriment be your company. 

BEAKS. — No, but wait. You shall not pack your- 
self so hastily off ! You should sit at table after the 
daily custom. 

MRS. BEAKS.— I have no liking for food; I 
could not taste ambrosia. 

BEAKS. — (Rings) — Let the dinner be brought. 

(Enter Julia.) 

JULIA. — Did you ring for me? 
BEAKS. — We will have dinner now. 

(Exit Julia.) 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 



'59 



BEAKS. — I never yet was master of my house, 
but always hung on others' becks and nods. 

(Re-enter Julia and places dinner on table and goes 

out.) 

MRS. BEAKS. — It is punishment on me to smell 
this food. I will leave you. 

BEAKS. — No, but take your place up ; I will have 
it so. 

MRS. BEAKS. — I will sit here, but not to eat. 

BEAKS. — What a thing is wedded bliss! I have 
misgivings now the harness sits not well on me, and 
must have my leathern collar newly padded. 

MRS. BEAKS.— Unbuckled, rather. 

BEAKS. — It is the very word; and this unhitch- 
ing of the tired team we name divorce, and your 
lawyers are the only licensed liverymen to unyoke 
again the fagged jades galled by the conjugal leath- 
er, but these will not do it, unless their dexterous 
palms be first well greased with a fat fee. There is 
no more dumb, forsaken or shrunken-visaged beast 
in nature than your lawyer with a dry palm ; he can 
scarce tell his own name with any assurance, but 
for a little fee in it, he will circumvent the twelve 
Justinian tables, prove that the mountains slumber- 
ous ledge is far more volatile than water, and Au- 
gust's torrid sun, colder than December's snow. 
Such potency is in a little fee. 



i6o OUR NEW HERALDRY 

(Enter Kate Grosscrop.) 

KATE. — O, and here I find you sitting at tea, 
cosy as two young ducks ! 

BEAKS. — Ducks ! Young ducks ! Their naked- 
ness cannot be cosy. You mistake ; we are in our 
clothes ! 

KATE. — O, you know my meaning very well ! 
(To Mrs. Beaks.) — I must ask a favor at the risk 
of being denied, and you shall grant it? 

MRS. BEAKS.— How do I know? 

KATE. — But promise me. 

MRS. BEAKS.— Let me first hear what 'tis. 

KATE. — I must borrow Julia of you. 

MRS. BEAKS.— Julia? 

KATE. — For the church party tomorrow night. I 
must have her. She is the trump card of a whole 
pack of servants. 

MRS. BEAKS.— As she says. 

KATE. — (Kisses her) — O, you are a dear! I 
will run to her. 

(Exit Kate.) 

BEAKS.— Who is that comes? 

(Enter Quillet.) 

QUILLET. — A thousand pardons for this in- 
trusion ! I dare not ask if I am welcome. 
BEAKS. — Be at your ease, sir! 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 161 

QUILLET. — Affairs of politics that know no 
courtesies ! I've searched you everywhere an hour 
past. 

BEAKS.— Me? 

QUILLET. — You may well look amazed, but I 
will later explain. This present business of impor- 
tance excuses my sudden haste ! 

BEAKS.— What is it? 

QUILLET.— Politics! Always politics! But 
the particulars later — I dwell in politics as the pet- 
rel does in air. I am straight from Grosscrop and 
on his affairs ! We have a coup d'etat afoot. 

BEAKS. — Grosscrop ? 

QUILLET. — And must talk with you privately; 
but you shall see ! Come, your hat ! Go with me I 
BEAKS.— I'll see what 'tis. 

(Exeunt Beaks and Quillet.) 



SCENE VI 



A STREET BY NIGHT 

(Enter Wattles, drunk.) 

WATTLES.— 'Rah for Grosscrop! Gad, a-had 
a merry time of it! A-drank old Bourbon at the 
Horseshoe! rye at the Badger! hot Scotch at the 



i62 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

Fig" Leaf ! beer at the Dutchman's ! and claret, sherry 
and such like drinks everywhere ! And all at Gross- 
crop's cost ! O he's a rare gentleman and worth 
any man's vote to this office ! 'Rah for Grosscrop ! 
A pity now if some beggarly fellow who spent noth- 
ing in the general entertainment should distance 
him in it! 'Rah for Grosscrop! (Enter a citizen.) 
Where's your voice, sir? Are you a Grosscropper 
or no? 

CITIZEN. — I am against the man. 

WATTLES. — O you anarchist to insult a gentle- 
man! You louse! You mangy cur! You ass! 
You— 

CITIZEN.—Go, fool! You're drunk! I'll not 
quarrel with you. 

(Exit citizen.) 

WATTLES. — Come on, coward! Come on, 
whelp ! He's gone, and with him a rare chance! 
Why, he grew pale with fear of me, and well might 
he ! I should have basted him one for a wizzen- 
lunged coward ! Gad, it's a fault in me that I'm too 
civil a quarreler to let men escape me ere I baste 
them. I must study me up a rougher manner and 
a big voice to fright men ! There's nothing so 
frights men as a big voice ! Gad ! I would I'd a 
bull's organ to it ! You should see them run ! For 
I should come on bellowing! Always bellowing! 
So ! And they should run ! And women and chil- 
dren should run. too ! 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 163 

(Enter Quillet, Beaks and laborers. Beaks drunk.) 

BEAKS. — Gentlemen, I'm intoxicated! I fear, 
gentlemen, I'm intoxicated ! 

QUILLET.— No ! no ! You are only drunk ! 

BEAKS.— Drunk! Not drunk! That is a nasty 
word ! Damn me if I'm drunk ! 

QUILLET. — Have it as you will, then ! Where, 
boys, are your voices now? Come! A round one 
for Grosscrop ! Come ! A round one, lads ! 

ALL. — Hurrah for Grosscrop ! Hurrah ! 'Rah ! 

A VOICE. — The poor man's friend ! 

QUILLET. — We've won him to our cause; his 
good heart is softened now to all workmen. You 
know it well that have drunk free at his cost to- 
night. He is won, and that it is so I take credit 
for it more than the least amongst you. You must 
not thank me that we have now so stout a friend. 

A VOICE.— We thank you. Quillet ! We thank 
you ! 

ALL.— Hurrah for Quillet! 

BEAKS, — Do know me, gentlemen? I'm Gross- 
crop's son-in-law, for next week I marry with his 
daughter Kate! Is't you there, Kate? This way, 
little Kate ! O Kate ! 

QUILLET. — He is very drunk; he but fancies 
this. 

BEAKS. — Fancies! What is fancies? Is't good 
drinking? He's father-in-law to me ! My wife and 



164 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

I are at outs. I marry again next week and to 
Kate! Did ever see Kate, gentlemen? Pinkwort's 
a clam ! 

QUILLET. — He is sotten drunk; give him a 
hand, lads. 

BEAKS.— Kate! Where's little Kate? I love 
none but Kate ! 

(Exeunt all. Enter Mrs. Beaks and Mrs. Crane- 
bill.) 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— O, am sure I've heard a 
thousand drunk and boisterous voices! The whole 
town's gone mad and bedlam is let loose. What a 
night it is! And so dark! 

MRS. BEAKS. — The streets are hideous and 
these harsh noises ! They are ever so by night, but 
tonight worse than I have known before. 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— A dismal forest and wild 
beasts lurking is not more lonesome than this street 
by night. 

MRS. BEAKS. — You have gone with me far 
enough. The prison is not now far off. Let us 
stop here and bid good-bye. 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— O that word prison wakes 
me to myself again, to remind me of this 
business we're about! What now if you should 
fail in it? if you should not get him out at last, 
and so make bad worse? or getting him out you 
should fail both to escape? or if any of a hundred 
likely mishaps should fall? 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 165 

MRS. BEAKS.— Fve considered all. The task 
seems harder than it is. 

MRS. CRAISTEBILL.— Yet if the jailer should be- 
tray you ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— He will not. 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— God speed you in it! I 
hope you are doing the right ! 

MRS. BEAKS. — Yet you have misgivings? 
MRS. CRANEBILL.— I have! God knows I 
have ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— And well you have! You shall 
hear rough speeches on me when Tm gone! 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— O mercy on us! 

MRS. BEAKS. — Do this much for me, Florence: 
Give my child a mother's care, and bring her to 
me when I send. Her little life is innocent! 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— I will! I promise I will! 

MRS. BEAKS. — I never in my life held any 
superstition, but tonight I have a strange forebod- 
ing not unlike to it. Some large event is pendant 
in the air and soon will fall, but whether good or 
bad I cannot say. 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— It is this business of jail 
breaking ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— It is more than that, yet what 
'tis I cannot tell ! But let it end there. YouVe 
heard me in my life say many unwomanly things, 
and you know what sins Fm guilty of? 



i66 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— I do, and may God par- 
don you ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— I deserve no pardon. Yet had 
the world dealt differently with me, I had been dif- 
ferent, I think — Your brother is a true man. 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— He is and a noble one! 

MRS. BEAKS.— This much, Florence, I beg you 
ever to believe of me — that it's not from wantonness 
I do this thing tonight. The world will say it's so 
and so will all believe, but do not you believe it. 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— No! no! I will not! 

MRS. BEAKS.— We are friends, I hope— true 
friends. There is no higher bond than that, either 
of blood or the ties of marriage, where nothing^s 
free but the entrance in, unless true friendship knits 
the cord to make it holy. How abused is that word 
friendship in the world, as if it were a common 
sort, capable to vulgar minds, and met on every 
hand! But I know you will not understand — few 
understand ! 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— I know your heart, Anne, 
and your proud spirit! May God forgive you as I 
forgive ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— I like no bitterness tonight and 
will not speak as I had thought to do at parting. 
Let us take good-bye now, for we may never meet 
again. 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— O, Anne. 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 167 

MRS. BEAKS.— Come, now! 

MRS. CRANEBILL.— O it is such grief! Let 
me go two steps farther with you — I'm bolder than 
you think — until we see the prison at that corner 
yonder ! 

MRS. BEAKS.— As you wish! 

(Exeunt both. Enter Wattles.) 

WATTLES. — I thought I spied a pair of pretty 
Street larks here! Am sure I did! And will find 
them, for I can smell out such royal game as your 
setter dog does grouse! Next to a ringed battle 
on Queensbury rules, I have a weakness for these 
gay wenches that inhabit lone streets by night, and 
drink ever gives me a sort of appetite to it ! I will 
after these two! 

(Exit Wattles. Enter Beaks.) 

BEAKS. — Ladies! Fair ladies! Where away, 
ladies? A gentleman would speak to you! An in- 
toxicated gentleman ! Stay, ladies ! How do, la- 
dies! How do! How do! How — how — 

(Exit Beaks.) 



i68 OUR NEW HERALDRY 



SCENE VII 



LAWN AT GROSSCROP'S HOUSE 

(Enter Julia and Webfoot at work.) 

WEBFOOT. — The devil take these church par- 
ties and all that have to do with them ! Here are 
two days' work in one and no allowance on the pay- 
roll. Last week was another, and the week before 
two. If these fine ones must need save their souls 
by this folly, let them do it at their own bodies' 
cost and not at mine. I have a whole covey of 
kicks coming, and one day I will let all fly, though 
they hit skirts as well as breeches. 

JULIA. — You must hurry up faster ! Come, bring 
me the lanterns here ! 

WEBFOOT. — O, woman has not even the gift of 
horse-driving with any touch of human tenderness 
in it, let alone driving a man ! She never knows a 
tight tug from a loose one nor any other thing but 
to lay on the lash stoutly. Look how you drive 
me, your poor dumb beast, that has run his legs 
off in your hard service these ten hours ! 

JULIA. — Are you a horse that you speak of tugs 
and lashes? 

WEBFOOT. — You take me to be one. 

JULIA. — I do not so, but I take you only for 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 169 

an ass, and not a dumb one either, but, like your 
brothers, one with a rude organ in his throat that 
he's winding always and never a pity on the poor 
ears that must hear it. 

WEBFOOT.— What kind of an ass do you take 
me to be? 

JULIA. — A dull one that needs the whip at every 
step. 

WEBFOOT. — No, but what gender do you give 
me? 

JULIA. — That I scarce know, but you must be 
a jack, unless there be a worse kind. 

WEBFOOT. — Then you are my jenny, and both 
of us together a pair, and a pair of asses at large 
on a grass plat leads to the getting of numbers; 
but here is one proviso to this. 

JULIA.— What proviso? 

WEBFOOT.— That they be not barren, which 
is the only one. 

JULIA. — Leave off this talking and hurry up! 
Look! what's to be done! And it already seven 
o'clock ! 

WEBFOOT.— Hurry up is dry music to tired 
legs. Who pays you for driving at this dog's gait? 

JULIA. — Shame on you for a lazy fellow ! Take 
the chairs away! 

WEBFOOT.— O, the philosophers may well set 
it down and no contradiction in a hundred thousand 



170 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

years — woman is a born tyrant where she holds the 
rod over. I had rather be a stoker by profession 
than to work at a woman's driving orders. 

JULIA. — Nor would I wish to have such a tardy 
one work under me every day. 

WEBFOOT. — Work under you every day? 

JULIA.—I would not have it, I said. 

WEBFOOT.— And I, too, would forego that 
gladly for the other employment. 

JULIA. — O, you are an ill-spoken scamp ! 

WEBFOOT. — So will you be, too, when we are 
one together, for husband and wife are as the two 
halves of the same bell, and should but one tongue 
and that the man's, but now that I remember it, I 
have a bit of bad news to tell you ! 

JULIA.— What news is it? 

WEBFOOT.— Bad news. 

JULIA.^ — You said so before! What bad news? 

WEBFOOT. — O bad ! very bad news ! But come, 
hurry up ! There's no time now for news, good 
or bad. And by the by, it's gossipy news, too! 

JULIA. — Tell me what it is. I will not stir until 
I hear it! 

WEBFOOT. — No, then, there is no time for it! 
O, now I have struck at the right key that respites 
me a little from harsh ordering! It's fearful news, 
and no one would have dreamt it. 

JULIA.— Tell me it! 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 



'V 



WEBFOOT. — Weak woman loves gossip as the 
bee pollen, and will traffic in it, the more so if it 
has a smack of naughtiness about it, as this has, 
for this is naughty gossip. Come, we have no time 
for all this idleness! 

JULIA.— If you will tell me it, I'll take back 
that I said, and you may come tomorrow night to 
Beaks' house to see me. There's a promise for you. 

WEBFOOT. — And one you cannot keep, for 
you'll not be there. That makes part of my news. 

JULIA.— Not be there? I will not be there? At 
Beaks' house? 

WEBFOOT. — No, you've lost your graft there, 
as the politicians say. You'll not be there unless 
it be to pack your duds. 

JULIA.— How so? 

WEBFOOT.— Mrs. Beaks is gone. 

JULIA.— Good God! She's not dead? 

WEBFOOT.— No, not dead! I did not say dead. 
Did I say dead? 

JULIA.— No. 
WEBFOOT.— Well, then! 
JULIA.— What is it? 
WEBFOOT.— She's gone. 

JULIA. — O tell me what has happened ! You 
kill me with this slowness. 

WEBFOOT. — You chide me now for ever talk- 



172 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

ing. I have my tongue at your school to learn 
silence. 

JULIA. — You may well talk less and say more! 
What did Mrs. Beaks do? 

WEBFOOT. — Changed her clothes out of sea- 
son, which is a grievous offense committed against 
polite etiquette. 

JULIA.— How did she? 

WEBFOOT.— By putting off the old garment 
and putting on the new. 

JULIA. — What meaning is in that? I see none. 

WEBFOOT. — O you would have me go about 
followed by an interpreter, like a Chinese pro-con- 
sul ! The meaning is plain, for it means that she 
has forsaken the halting old love for the sprightly 
new one that has snap to it. The dull botanists of 
old set love down as a perennial vegetable, but our 
new science proves it to be no more than an annual 
or a biennial at the very most, and its seedlings 
chiefly die at six short months; the frost of two 
winters measures its life's extremest compass, and 
wistful maids and melancholy youths that say dif- 
ferently say falsely. 

JULIA. — What? She did not leave her husband? 

WEBFOOT.— Not till she found another forked 
warming-bottle to cosy her bed with. She's off with 
young Feathers. 

JULIA.— He that is in jail? 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 173 

WEB FOOT. — That was but is not now in jail. 

JULIA. — You tell me miracles if you tell me 
true! How did he get out of it? I saw a jail once 
and the bleached and wasted men that lay upon 
the damp floor hemmed in with masonry and frown- 
ing black bars of woven steel, and looked like poor 
limber fishes jerked from their native water and 
in a noisome cavern left to waste themselves with 
thirst and longing. How were these bars opened? 

WEBFOOT.— It's not the first time love picks 
a lock, nor will it be last unless men and women 
grow below with different organs. She played the 
whole lot of them smartly, for here she comes 
into the dark passage at night and lays her little 
hand on the very key, and rolls the rust door 
back on its unwilling hinges, and Feathers steps 
out to her like a young cock to meet his favorite 
Partelote, and the aged keeper none the wiser for 
it all. Reynard, the fox, will have a pretty chase 
to catch up with his bird again. 

JULIA. — Fve read in books of happenings such 
as this, but not before in life to witness it. O, 
if they should now be caught. 

WEBFOOT.— If they be caught? What if they 
be caught? 

JULIA. — Heaven forbid they should be caught! 

WEBFOOT.— Go along with such talk, and to 
uphold them in it! It would serve them right if 
they were caught. 



174 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

JULIA. — I would not wish it so. 

WEBFOOT.— They should be caught, and 
quickly, too, had I my wish to it. There is no rea- 
sonable woman but will fix her last faith on lovers' 
causes and plead heaven devoutly for their safe- 
ness. How is it, then, about the husband wronged 
and home deserted? 

JULIA. — She was not happy in it, though to the 
world appearing so. Her deeper spirit drooped 
a prisoner. Your news leaves me no will to work; 
but we are near done. I will give you your dis- 
charge now. 

WEBFOOT.— Until tomorrow? 

JULIA. — Until I call you again. 

WEBFOOT. — Until you find me, you may bet- 
ter say, for who finds me out to do any further 
work tonight must wear spectacles. 

(Exit Webfoot.) 

JULIA. — (Calling after) When the guests come 
you must be about. 

(Enter Pinkwort and Kate.) 

KATE. — ^^What! and you are working still, Julia? 
You must think me a hard task-maker to set you 
so much. Leave ofif now; it is good enough. 

JULIA. — It is nearly finished in such way as 
I've been able. 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 175 

KATE. — You work beyond your strength to 
stand. You should not. 

JULIA.— O, it is nothing! 

KATE. — Rest now awhile until the guests ar- 
rive. 

(Exit Julia.) 

PINKWORT.— She seems a faithful worker 

KATE. — I never saw her better. Let us sit here 
under the arched vine. The day is fading and gentle 
twilight steals softly up. I love this hour above the 
rest, though it, mostly, makes me sad. 

PINKWORT. — Look where the vanished sun 
gilds with his burning fire the tall western peaks 
marking the place he sank ! 

KATE. — It is the year's richest season in these 
sun-set dyes. How calm the high mountain is that 
lifts his bold head there in state ! I am fast friend 
to him and he to me. 

PINKWORT.— A cold friend in such an icy 
cloak, and who speaks little, as I think. 

KATE. — Yet his silence has a voice to teach pa- 
tience with. His snowy crown lodged above the 
battling storms to shake or time to alter him, sleeps 
peacefully. 

PINKWORT.— And see where his lesser broth- 
ers stoop at his feet to acknowledge him for their 
true monarch. They are shrouded, too, in white. 



176 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

so high their points are, though seeming low in the 
comparison. 

KATE. — My eye gives them a yellowish tint — a 
creamy yellow — rather than pure white. 

PINKWORT.— So indeed they are. 

KATE. — I think that mountains should be na- 
ture's statuary, whose perfect hand, whether she 
folds up the solid continent into these sky-piercing 
piles or in the little cup within the primrose builds, 
builds perfectly. Man's work is not so. 

PINKWORT. — The reason is man is yet appren- 
ticed. 

KATE. — It may be so, but not to nature's school. 
His gaudy work shows outwardly most, which, 
labored surface gone, leaves but an ugly heap, but 
in her hidden inward parts the excellencies of na- 
ture most appear. 

PINKWORT.— Yet man is himself of nature, 
and his works likewise. 

KATE. — I cannot rightly place pretentious man. 
He is a noisy singer in the orchestra who does not 
sing to the tune with his fellows. 

PINKWORT.— He is builder, rather than one 
who sings. 

KATE. — He is truly, and yet the ambitious house 
he builds of marble, polished and glassy plates re- 
fined from moulten sands to reflect a thousand suns 
for one, dazzling the beholder's eye, has not the 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 177 

touches of universal, sweet concord in it that the 
bee's small chamber has, that taught geometry to 
Achimedes. How quick the tints have changed 
above ! 

PINKWORT. — They have so, and give place 
now to a soft green stain. The belief is current 
that such wealth of coloring in the evening sky 
foretells approaching rain, which, like the orchard's 
ripening fruit, shows in rich colors ere it falls. The 
darting light beats from his true course by the over- 
charged moisture in the air, which waits the thun- 
der's voice to shake it loose for falling. 

KATE. — I do not know its cause, but only that 
it is. But my melancholy grows on me, and will 
soon hold me in full possession. 

PINKWORT.— You have no cause. 

KATE. — I have none but of gladness, yet I am 
no longer so tonight. 

PINKWORT.— (Kisses her) My love is light- 
ness if it cannot summon your cheerfulness again. 

KATE. — You do me wrong to say it. I well know 
the unmeasured worth of a good man's love, and 
what in return is due to it from her. 

PINKWORT.— This thing you heard of Mrs. 
Beaks discomfits you too much ; you should not 
let it. 

KATE. — It is beyond me to prevent. An hour 
ago my glass was bubbling at the brim, until I 
heard this news, but it has proved the suctious 



178 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

siphon dipped into my full cup that runs its con- 
tents now upon the thirsty sands; 'twill fill again 
presently. 

PINKWORT.— You're moved too much by it. 

KATE. — I cannot help it. 

PINKWORT.— You should not take it so to 
heart. 

KATE. — My reason tells me that I but lack in 
strength. 

PINKWORT.— We should bear it well in mind 
that, for all our power to stay them off, foul things 
are common still. Blacker than this are of hourly 
happening in some quarter throughout the popu- 
lous globe. It is the field we work in to mend 
these. 

KATE. — I know it well, yet this is no good medi- 
cine now to my touched sense. 

PINKWORT.— It is our christian quality to 
withstand firmly. 

KATE. — So it is written down in my rules, but 
this one chiefly holds me in its debt for many leaps 
over it. 

PINKWORT. — Our peaceful constancy should 
imitate the constant sun's that in his burning course 
looks daily down upon many loathsome and de- 
tested things, and is not hindered from his true 
path, but at the appointed stroke shuts up his 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 



79 



western gate. Such fixed, unerring purpose he 
holds should mark the christian's life also. 

KATE. — I have not that strength, nor ever hope 
to have it. It is the nearness of this thing afi'ects 
me. 

PIlsTKWORT. — Its nearness is but a thing of 
place, and place no part of the true action. You 
should reason it out so. The event transpired is 
the same one whether at our door 'tis done or as 
far from us removed as the space that parts the 
frozen from the torrid zone ; we should look on it 
both ways alike. 

KATE. — I think it is philosophy's part to make 
many rules and humanity's to break them, and this 
one with the rest. The rule is not for her. Place 
is an ingredient of the action that philosophy can- 
not bar out. We take no note of it that the light- 
ning strikes a distant tree, but when its live bolt 
rips down the friendly trunk that stands within the 
circuit of our eye, breaking the hurtling dust upon 
our cheek to sting it, we cannot but look pale, no 
matter what behavior philosophy may instruct us 
in for such use. And so it is with me in this ; I 
cannot be but moved to sadness by it. 

PINKWORT.— I'd never a mind to this woman ; 
she was listed in my distrust; my better part of 
judgment always set her down as a wayward and 
capricious one. 

KATE. — I never thought her such. 



i8o OUR NEW HERALDRY 

PINKWORT.— But that stands now approved. 
She'd a kind of look in her strong eyes — I hardly 
know exactly what — but a kind of look to set one 
thinking. 

KATE. — It may be. My sense reads nature 
poorly in man's or woman's face. But how does 
her afflicted husband bear his grief? It must sit 
heavy on him. 

PINKWORT.— It does indeed. His whole coun- 
tenance tells how much. He is now within in pri- 
vate conversing with your father. His sore case 
needs a friend's good office. 

KATE. — He has my heart's compassion ; and 
she also ; I know not which the most. 

PINKWORT.— It's pity poorly spent that's spent 
on her, and yet I do it. 

KATE. — What trials have suffering ones 
throughout the spreading world to plague them ! I 
that escape them most, am most ungrateful, and 
value the exemption lightly, returning for it only 
my poor melancholy. 

PINKWORT. — It is true you are at times too 
melancholy; it's a fault to repair; I must hold you 
to account for too much sadness. You should not 
yield to these obstinate and ungrateful fits, but hold 
them in correction rather. You offend against 
heaven not to receive his gifts with a better grace. 

KATE. — That you say I know to be the truth. 
Heaven has dealt in kindness with me from the 



OUR NEW HERALDRY i8i 

first, who into my undeserving hand delivered to 
me all and made no draft of payment on me in 
return nor held me to account of it, but cancelled 
the due demand unpaid. Saving a dear mother's 
death when my years were fewer than could taste 
of such a loss, I've had no biting cause of grief in 
my whole course of life ; yet I repay all this again 
with dolorous sighs wrung from my empty bosom, 
weighing the light air with heaviness. I've heard 
said my darling mother when she lived endured like 
spells. It is a grievous fault I know in me, but one 
I have no will to conquer. 

PINKWORT.— Nor will you have the will until 
you first dissuade yourself you have it not. What 
our confident ability tells us we can do is by that 
confidence already half accomplished. 

KATE. — I suck strength from your fair speech 
as the cub nourishment from its dam that languishes 
without it. 

PINKWORT. — When your wilted sadness steals 
on let your better part of judgment count over the 
list you stand indebted to heaven's good grace for, 
as health, youth, a whole mind, friends, fortune, 
home, with the thousand particulars embraced in 
these, that stand all upon your side to teach you 
cheerfulness. What cause of grief outweighing 
these have you? 

KATE. — None I have, but only another one of 
God's good bounties to me, unnumbered by you. 



i82 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

that outweighs all these and tips them to the beam. 

PINKWORT.— Life follows unnamed within the 
list. 

KATE. — It is not life, but that to me that's 
dearer far than life, and which I could not lose 
but with it would lose life ; it is your love I mean, 
bestowed on me unworthy it. 

PINKWORT.— That too you have, and wholly. 

KATE. — And holily I will guard it, that I may 
never lose it. But tell me a little tale here in the 
shade. Come, it will drive me straight into better 
spirits? 

PINKWORT.— What tale? 

KATE. — I will shut my eyes and listen ; there 
is no music but in your voice. You know it well, 
for you were chief party to it. It is the little one 
of how you "wooed and won me," as the story- 
books say. My memory holds it as a sweet dream ; 
let me fresh dream it again in your words. Begin 
at the very first, and leave nothing out. 

PINKWORT.— Let me see, then! At the first 
you held me oi¥, and — 

KATE.— No! no! Not that way! But begin 
like this, as the fairy tales do — "Once upon a time" 
— and make a pretty story. You have only to 
leave nothing out. 

PINKWORT.— Well, then. Once upon a tim? 
there lived, there lived — It will take me to think 
a little first. Once upon a time there lived — 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 183 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— (Within) Pinkwort! Oh 
Pinkwort ! 

KATE. — It is my step-mother calls you. 

PINKWORT.~I will go to her and return 
again. 

(Exit Pinkwort.) 

KATE. — I dearly love him and he me also; I 
owe him much, but should heaven spare to me my 
life, it's a debt I will repay again when Fm his 
wife. (Voices within.) But voices come this way! 
It is my father's and this distressed Beaks. I would 
not now meet this afflicted man. (Hides.) I will 
lay in here while they pass. 

(Enter Beaks and Grosscrop.) 

GROSSCROP. — Yet now you show discerning 
sense. How fair a thing is guiding reason in man 
that marks him apart from lesser animals. 

BEAKS. — O, but you should have seen me at 
the first to judge how I was moved by it ! Good 
reason then in me had like to meet his death and 
give me over to intemperate fury for its prey; I 
was on the very point of it. 

GROSSCROP.— And it is a thing that proves 
you for a whole man, that at last your reason 
ruled you. 

BEAKS. — I hope I'm reasonable ! I hope I come 
for reason. He was ever part name to me, and 
never parted his company further than last night 



184 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

when I learned first this thing of you and her; but 
it set me on the very edge, and I could easily have 
fallen either way. 

GROSSCROP. — How fair a thing is reason ! And 
fairest then where most it's needed, though hardest 
to support! In the large trials of fate, man's rea- 
son is a lighted candle borne in tempest warring 
night with many blasts to quench it, but who saves 
it burning saves to his feet a necessary guide. 

BEAKS. — I hope I'm so guided, but last night 
I would not wager on it. There was a storm 
then and a heavy sea against, as it were, and the 
tumbling waves, every one white-capped, and my 
struggling reason afloat ! It was a toss-up what 
I'd next do, but that's past and gone! I hope I'm 
reasonable ! 

GROSSCROP.— You are truly. 

BEAKS. — You may well believe it when I 
smelled her out for your former mistress that was 
with child by you at her marriage to me, it was 
like — I know not what — it was like molten lead 
poured on, or suffocating air, or I cannot say what 
was like it! 

KATE.— What thing is this ! 

GROSSCROP.— You dwell too much on it. 

BEAKS. — And her boldness denied nothing, but 
admitted freely that she had done every office to 
you, and that before she left off short skirts! 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 185 

KATE. — Do my senses fail me? Or am I ra- 
tional? 

GROSSCROP.— Do not, I beg of you, dwell fur- 
ther on it that can serve no other good than to 
inflame you up again and oppress me the more, 
that am already sore oppressed! Do not, I beg! 

BEAKS. — O she'd never a blush to confess it! 
Had I not been strong-willed I had done some 
rough action upon her. How could you two hold 
me so in blindness? 

GROSSCROP,— The strongest flesh is weak- 
ness ; this oft repeated truth philosophy takes never 
sufficiently to the account, and so comes off short- 
handed at the reckoning. 

BEAKS. — But to think she had been in your 
use so? 

GROSSCROP.— My part in it I dearly have re- 
pented, and plead in its excuse our common weak- 
ness only. What living innocent one is it that has 
done no hidden sin, and would not stammer, blush 
and look with giddy paleness to see his secret ac- 
tion probed by the searching light for all to gaze 
at? There is no such guiltless one, but the sum of 
them is numberless who in their heart's closed cen- 
ters, locked safely up, conceal battalions of such 
monstrous and misshapen deeds; yet this for all, 
excuses nothing. 

KATE. — Just God! What nightmare monster 
is it that creeps on me to make me doubt if I am 



i86 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

waking? My father! I'll call him to my side to 
shake me from this abhorred dream ! It cannot be 
but that I dream! My father! 

GROSSCROP. — Did not someone speak there? 

BEAKS. — My buzzing ears hear poorly or it was 
the breeze that rises now a little. O but that word 
buzzing calls up last night again. There was a 
pretty rumpus then in my poor head ! I was hot 
and cold together; I was both wet and dry; I was 
a chafed lion and one, too, with tfie staggered hen 
that looks too long at the shining metal pan ; I was 
unshaken and shaken also, like an apothecary's bot- 
tle of contents to mix disliking liquors. I know 
not which contrary emotion possessed me most, but 
each in turn played on me to the full. 

GROSSCROP.— You fall to living it over again 
in such speeches. Do not, I pray, but look rather 
on the brighter side ! Remember what I have 
promised you. So much for the present use, but 
my more leisure time will devise what further ben- 
efit I can recompense you with, and so you have my 
word to it. 

BEAKS. — I do not forget it's so, and your kind- 
ness is a lump of sweetness dropped into my bitter 
cup that gives me better heart to drink it. Yet 
there's another something I scarce dare speak of, 
and still would have you know. 

GROSSCROP.— Be bold to tell me it. What is 
it you would say? 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 187 

BEAKS. — I scarce can tell, for my poor head 
swims, but I've been cheated of a wife, is't not? 

GROSSCROP.— It is confessed. 

BEAKS.— And child and children, too? 

GROSSCROP.— Is that the thing? 

BEAKS. — Not that you think I mean to say! 
You have a daughter? 

GROSSCROP.— Why will you revert again to 
this to wound me deeper? 

BEAKS. — But you mistake me there. It is your 
daughter Kate I speak of. 

GROSSCROP.— What is it of her? She knows 
nothing of this business. 

BEAKS. — I trust she does not and never may. 
I must speak more plain ! I nurse a hope I yet may 
win her for my wife in place of her that's gone, 
from whom I mean to take divorcement. 

GROSSCROP.— Your wife? 

BEAKS. — It is but a hope, I said. Yet now I 
fear to speak with too much suddenness. My 
thought goes to it and likes no pause. Such happy 
happening would breach the broken fragments of 
my life across and knit them close again. Her 
modest virtue and quiet qualities have long lived 
in my observance to win esteem of me. It would 
restore me quite to know that I had your kindly 
will and helpful office to it. 

GROSSCROP.— This is so unexpected ! So hasty 



i88 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

fallen! Her frame of mind is delicate in its parts 
and sensitive to the touch ol any grossness. But 
here others come that now must end our present 
talk of this. Some future time we'll weigh it over. 

(Enter Mrs. Grosscrop and Rev. Pinkwort.) 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— And still the long face 
bears you in its company? Such ancient manner- 
ing for a wife that's dead, hints at ill-breeding and 
no refining smack of our new gentility about it. 

BEAKS.— My wife's not dead but left me only. 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— It is the same thing by a 
different word, for a wife deserting is a wife al- 
ready dead to him she has deserted. O you're but 
an untrimmed plank still, rough fallen from the 
saw, and no touch of the smoothing plane or pol- 
ishing paper yet given it. Your knowledge of the 
game stamps you for green. 

BEAKS. — You do not give me that my under- 
standing bites. 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— It is a toothless under- 
standing, and must to the bottle as other nurslings 
do. When a wife dies what next pin does the 
lonesome husband move upon the board? There's 
no well bred boy at school but knows it. 

BEAKS.— What pin? 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— Why he beds another 
wife. It is writ down in every husband's memory 
to do that upon the present one's death, and age 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 189 

and attendant aches are no impediment to it. O 
there's never a superannuated and wrinkled grey- 
beard whose shrunken-gummed mate, Joan, did him 
honest duty in his hard service for two score years, 
but every time she's abed with a colic or the cramp, 
bethinks his bald noddle how soon it will be until 
he puts this rule to the practice. It is a particular 
rule to wedlock that bears exceptions thinner 
against it than any other, to keep up this proces- 
sion. 

PINKWORT.— What procession is it? 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— Of marriages following 
funerals and funerals marriages to the last tick of 
time. And it is chiefly noted there for a strange 
anomaly that rubs wooly nature's fur counter, that 
widowered bald-pates hold a noble affinity for 
young and hot virginity, and therefore you shall 
never see a watery-eyed old man and face of scabby 
dryness but will fix his election fast upon a strip- 
ling girl not yet above sixteen years; but 'tis from 
the grammar school they all will pick a second wife, 
yet the old man picks his the youngest. 

PINKWORT.— You cut our gentlemen too 
sharp in such a speech. There is no marriage but 
woman too is party to it and holds her free voice 
with it to answer either yes or no. Old men would 
never marry maids if maids w^ould marry not with 
them. She must find in it some equalling thing to 
tempt her to it. 



190 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 



MRS. GROSSCROP.— It is his tempting dough 
she finds that tempts her itching fingers to stick 
their prettiness into it, and so holds them fast as 
the spider's web the flies. It needs that proviso. 

PINKWORT.— What proviso? 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— That one of the money; 
the old man must have it or his lean legs shall lie 
alone and no young blood to warm them. 

(Enter Quillet.) 

QUILLET. — The caucusing committee is clam- 
oring for you loudly, and dispatched me off in 
haste to fetch you. You must go at once. 

GROSSCROP.— What? Is anything amiss? 

QUILLET.— Nothing; but all bids well to make 
a speedy choice of you. Our iron is hot to white- 
ness, and every light blow leaves now his deep in- 
dent. The galleries are hoarse with shouting of 
your name, and the opposing voices smothered into 
silence. 

GROSSCROP.— But there's no surety yet; the 
issue hangs still upon uncertainties. 

QUILLET. — By as safe a guess as any happen- 
ing not yet arrived, can be foretold, your election is 
a surety. 

GROSSCROP. — Yet is there no concealed intent 
in this? What purpose prompted them to send for 
me at such a time? 

QUILLET. — Be assured on that; it was done on 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 191 

motion of your friends by my suggestion that the 
sight of you might wind enthusiasm higher. 

GROSSCROP.— I will go at once. 

QUILLET. — You should frame a little speech 
to greet them, a few soft-falling, oily words, that 
do no hurt to anyone. It is windy nothings such 
as these that touch the stops open on that rude and 
thunderous organ, the popular voice. 

(Exit Grosscrop, Beaks and Quillet.) 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— They will sure make elec- 
tion of him. 

PINKWORT.— It is stoutly to be hoped, but why 
do you so confidently express it? 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— For that nature has af- 
fixed to him the tags and seals that mark him for 
one to win the popular favor. There is no ill part 
in man to catch their votes but he wears loudly the 
badge of it upon his vest. 

PINKWORT.— What do you esteem these need- 
ful parts? I beg you tell me. 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— The main one is a good 
cover hiding a rotten core, for the herd never look 
beneath the painted skin, and in that particular they 
imitate those playful insects which are drawn on 
by gaudy coloring to sip at it, though the ingredient 
of it be poison to them. 

PINKWORT.— And the next? 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— The next— you press me 



192 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

too close to run over such foul ground ; I must take 
breath — the next, no god but self; no friends but 
serve as stones to mount by; no honor but cun- 
ning; no directness but indirection; no practice but 
a false one ; no — O, the catalogue of bad qualities is 
too many to word it over ! But why do you look 
about so? 

PINKWORT.— It is for Kate I look; I left her 
here a moment since, but now it seems she's gone. 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— Your mind runs to her 
constantly. I must check you for too much atten- 
tion shown to her of late; you should take care 
how you kindle me up to jealousy of her. 

PINKWORT. — Indeed I have given you no 
cause, though confessing I esteem her highly. 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— But I fear your esteem 
grows contemplative, which is the sure precursor 
of sighs and love ballads. You show me scanty 
courtesy when she is by ; you avoid my eye, finding 
out hers with yours. You do not care a doit for 
me longer ! 

PINKWORT.— O, you mistake! You mistake 
indeed ! You interpret me wrongly ! 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— I guess the wind's direc- 
tion by the idle chaff that rides with him. 

PINKWORT. — It is almost dark, and none can 
see us here! (Kisses her hand.) 

KATE. — And kisses, too ! Merciful heaven ! 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 193 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— But why do you hold 
aloof from me so much of late? 

PINKWORT.— It is that our love is covert, and 
may only show himself in secret, that your ob- 
servance makes me seem a little cold when those 
are by that might take note of it. 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— And Kate above the rest? 

PINKWORT. — Her intuitive sense is quick to 
read more than on the surface shows. 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— She eyes you much of 
late, and grows moody, too, both signs that love 
in her is making measurement of you. YouVe en- 
couraged her to it. 

PINKWORT. — I have not so by word or any 
action that she might construe to it. 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— Still I am in part re- 
solved to tell her something that in justice she 
should know. 

PINKWORT.— Not of my wife? 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— You guess it rightly; it 
would be better to tell her frankly you've a wife 
yet living, whom you're parted from. This much, 
since she looks on you, she should in fairness know, 
with injunction to hold it secret. Let me tell her 
of it tonight. 

PINKWORT.— No ! no! Not for the world; I 
beg you earnestly do not tell her it! 

KATE. — What place — what evil place is't here 



194 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

I stand in, where every sound is keener than a ser- 
pent's sting and every sight a basilisk to strike out 
my eyes? All-seeing God that dwellest above in 
peace — a witness to thy traitorous and false serv- 
ant, man, who, in thy sight, spurns thy ordinance, 
mocks at thy sovereign law, and spits against high 
heaven's face, forbear no more thy wrathful hand 
to split open the purple dome above and spill out 
the sulphurous rains upon his scornful head ! Leave 
thy divinity now, thy patience and forgiveness, too, 
and be a vengeful God, not a merciful, that this, thy 
rebel and haughty-hearted subject, may taste his 
true deserts ! Strike fear, strike quaking fear into 
his ungrateful bowels, that he may beg thee mercy 
now, but show him none ! Awake thy slumbering 
ministers that tend on man's destruction ! Call up 
the hoarse and pitiless whirlwind out of the droop- 
ing south, that her horrid and fierce threatening 
brow may over-top the sun and blot him out; fix 
no confine, no place or boundary to her licensed 
play but give her o'er the spacious world to frolic 
in, until her climbing and pent rage gains such pro- 
portions that from its firm axle the globe itself be 
ript and man tossed out ! Shame ! Shame ! Shame ! 

(Exit Kate hurriedly.) 

PINKWORT.— What noise was it there? Did 
you hear nothing? 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— I did, but do not know 
what 'twas. 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 195 

PINKWORT. — Some one concealed ran from the 
bushes there! 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— The sound was like it. 

PINKWORT.— 'Twas Kate who overheard our 
talk ! Fm sure 'twas Kate ! I am undone if it 
was she! 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— No ; you mistake! Your 
fear too hastily jumps. (Enter Julia with lights.) 
It is Julia that this way comes to light the lan- 
terns up. It is the hour and the guests will soon 
arrive. 

PINKWORT. — I am much relieved since it is 
so! I feared we had been seen. 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— Or heard, you may bet- 
ter say. 

PINKWORT.— Both seen and heard, and either 
bad enough. 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— And look how you trem- 
ble at it! For shame on your man's courage! It 
is more timid than the timorous hare in spring 
that flies his own shadow on the moon-lit grass. 

PINKWORT.— Yet where is Kate? Her ab- 
sence and that noise both lend me some uneasiness. 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— I will speak to this girl 
of her. (To Julia) Where is my daughter Kate? 
Did you see her as you came? 

JULIA. — I did not, ma'am. 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— Then go and search for 



196 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

her and tell her that we wait her here. Remind her 
that it's near the hour. 

(Exit Julia.) 

PINKWORT.— Our watchfulness should be 
more wary or it will call detection on us. 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— You are too fearful. But 
here the first installment of our dowdy company 
comes. Now for the clap of parrots' tongues, and 
smirks, and quirks, and gossips' yarns, and aged 
jokes, and compliments stale, and whatever else 
goes with a ladies' congress of promiscuous dames ! 

(Enter several ladies.) 

1st L. — And so we are the first to come? 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— The first and therefore 
first in welcome ! You're precisely on the hour ; the 
others will be here directly. 

2nd L. — Good evening, pastor! How noble 'tis 
of you to sit apart in lonesome meditation and read- 
ing of the stars, I'll warrant. 

1st L. — It is a very night for star-reading! 

3rd L.' — Most like it is his petition against Sab- 
bath-breakers ! How goes it, pastor? 

PINWORT.— Good evening, ladies! And good 
welcome to you all ! 

1st L. — O, did you hear the dreadful news? I'm 
dying to tell it! 

2nd L. — O shocking news ! 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 197 

3rd L. — O, simply horrid news! 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— What is it? Tell us what 
'tis? 

ist L. — That wicked Mrs. Beaks — 

2nd L. And Feathers, too ! My husband said 
Feathers ! 

3rd L. — They ran away together — 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— Your news is old. We've 
known it long ago they ran away. 

1st L. — Our news is more than that; you have 
not heard the last nor worst of it. 

2nd L. — My husband said it was worse, and 
worst he'd heard for many a day. 

1st L. — When they were fleeing from the officers 
in pursuit, and reached the straits — 

3rd L. — The officers were hard upon their track— 

2nd L. — And tried to cross the windy straits — 

1st L. — In a small boat that there they had picked 
up— 

3rd L. — They both were drowned ! 

2nd L. — Drowned in the very water, my husband 
said! 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— What ! She was not 
drowned? 

1st L. — Yes, drowned! 

2nd L. — A hundred fathoms deep or more, my 
husband said ! 



198 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

3rd L. — Both were drowned! 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— It was a dreadful fate so 
suddenly to overtake her ! Yet this may be a flying 
rumor merely, lacking confirmation. Invention 
waits upon all noisy happenings to breed a hundred 
false reports of them. 

2nd L. — But this report is true ! Is true ! I know 
it's true ! My husband saw a man that saw an offi- 
cer that saw them sink, and never raised for a third 
time, which he took for an evil sign. 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— How so an evil sign? 

2nd L. — They did not raise three times ! Had 
their poor souls been right they had raised three 
times, as all good folks in drowning do. It's bad 
enough to drown in any sense, but God spare me 
a drowning and not to raise three times adoing it! 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— In your emergency I 
trust your better luck will float you up a thousand 
times instead of three, and the last on firm dry 
ground, with your good breath still in you. 

2nd L. — Only three times ! I would not wish it 
more nor less than three even times. 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— This is a sad thing! 

2nd L. — And to sink like stones ! There is the 
worst I And not for a third time to put their heads 
up ! I would not for the world they were kith or 
kin to me and drown so ! 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— Yet now her end is made 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 199 

and no more harm can touch her. The remorse- 
less sisters at the wheel can spin no other tangled 
skein with length enough to reach her freed feet 
to trip them up to any further harm. 

2nd L. — You speak too feelingly of her ! 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— She has paid her bond to 
nature in the full and holds in its discharge a bank- 
rupt's good acquittance and true receipt exempting 
her from any further draft, while we, poor, blind, 
bewildered traffickers here, dreading the unwelcome 
hour this stern creditor shall call us to the like ac- 
count with him, do fiercely sweat ourselves and 
loudly pant for breath, to stretch the cinctures wider 
of our poor merchandise that only its grosser bulk 
may win on us our petty neighbors' envy, until a 
little while has run, a little while whose uncertain 
term we do not know, and then comes the execu- 
tion bailiff down with his sealed writ from that court 
whence lies no appeal, to strip us naked of our all 
in payment, and level down our great bigness to 
equal theirs that lie the flattest. For in the end we 
only pay this debt at last that being paid, leaves us 
no remnant behind of anything. She has paid the 
debt, and therefore, her poorness now is not more 
poor than we ourselves who have it still to pay by 
rendering all to it. 

2nd L. — You speak too feelingly of her to give 
her so much credit ! Too feelingly indeed ! She paid 
nothing unless it be she paid the round price of 



200 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

her capering folly with some addition fixed to it 
for usury's sake! For as my husband says, who 
does a dance must pay his piper's price, and so I 
think she paid hers, and think you wrong to say 
these speeches on her that might be said upon her 
betters who drowned properly and three comings 
up ! God between us and harm, that is what I say, 
and think you wrong that say otherwise ! 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— I said nothing but that 
it was a sad thing. 

2nd L. — Sad, but not sad so ! 

3rd L. — And I agree it's sad! Now that she is 
dead and gone, I agree it's sad ! And I do not say 
it either that any should mistake me to upholding 
such a drowning, which I hope not so to be mis- 
understood of me, but I say still it's sad, and said 
so first, as my girl Susan knows, who is a good 
servant of her kind, and can bear me witness that 
I did. 

ist L. — Indeed it's sad, and the hearing it made 
me feel so strangely sad, I had scarce been here 
tonight but to see the Danish count that's coming, 
and how counts act in company, and to make judg- 
ment for myself how the affair stands between him 
and big Miss Stoutly, who they say has set her 
cap for him, backed by her father's money, though 
I would not wish to speak my true opinion of such 
a match. 

3rd L.— 'Twill be no match between these two! 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 201 

Her saucy fatness will win little good of it to set 
her feathered cap for him for all her father's money, 
which is not more than May Meeks' uncle has, who 
holds the count a lump of dough within her hand 
to make of it what thing she will, and a far more 
likely match it would be though some few think 
her old, and her left eye cast, which looked at 
rightly does not mar her looks at all, as I've heard 
many say, and judges, too, that well might speak, 
and — 

2nd L. — But young Narrows that was her suitor! 
Where is young Narrows? She surely has not broke 
with Narrows, a poor and struggling doctor of two 
years' practice at it and patiently waiting his first 
patient still ! You do not tell me she has broke 
with Narrows? 

1st L. — Where have you slept this while and not 
to hear she has? 

2nd L. — O then, so much for learning if that's 
the reward it meets with! Narrows is a scholar 
and knows all kinds of things from books and 
writes such verses too, you'd swear you read a 
very poet to read them. I am for Narrows, and 
she has no sense otherwise. 

1st L. — And far too good for her he is! That 
was a shameful thing of hers over on Windy Beach ! 
I had not believed any girl to be so indecent ! 

2nd L.— O tell us! 

3rd L. — Do tell us ! 



202 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

1st L. — O it is too indecent! I have no will to 
harm her! Yet I think 'twas the most immoral 
thing, and for a young girl too, and decent parents I 

2nd L. — Pray tell us ! O it must be good ! Tell 
us pray! 

3rd L.— O tell us! 

ist L. — I am no gossip and I fear to harm her! 
Let you take my word for it that 'twas a most in- 
decent and immoral thing for a young girl ! As 
immoral and indecent as may well be imagined. 
Let me not do her the injury to tell what it was ! 

• 2nd L. — O if you love us tell ! 

3rd L. — We'll give you no peace else ! 

1st L. — Well then I will tell you but not from any 
love of gossip, and you must not think it. 

2nd L. — O God forbid that any should think 
you gossipy or any of us here. We are Christian 
ladies all, I hope. 

1st L. — Why then this it was: She owns a 
bathing gown and breeches, and with them went 
a-bathing on the beach, and men standing not far 
off, and God knows what! 

2nd L. — O the horrid thing! 

3rd L.— O! O! O! 

2nd L. — O we will cut her! 

3rd L. — Yes! Yes! I am for cutting her! 

1st L. — O true she deserves a cutting! 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 203 

(Enter Wattles.) 

WATTLES.— It's done ! It's done ! And here I 
am leaving my breath behind me to be the first to 
tell it ! It was a cold knock-out, and in ten minutes 
from the first note of the gong! I would not call 
it above three straight bouts when it's finished and 
the referee throws down the staff! 

PINKWORT.— What is it? What is done? 

WATTLES. — He whipped them to the pit and 
they may make their choice of jumping into it! 
(Cheers within.) And there the mad rabble come 
madly riding him on their shoulders, if he were 
the true champion had won the world's best belt 
a thousand times ! Hurrah for Grosscrop ! 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— Why what is the matter? 

WATTLES. — Grosscrop is elected ! We did it ! 
We swore we'd do it and will not be damned for 
perjury unless it be perjury to swear a true oath 
and keep it! We whipped them to their holes in a 
malady of sickness for healing liniments and pota- 
tions, and the best doctors name their ailment 
dumbness, for the sharpest ear can hear no voice 
of them that were before louder than croaking 
frogs ! Hurrah for Grosscrop ! The new senator ! 
My voice is cracked now that had my best wind 
through his horn before the lazy sun climbed him 
out of bed this day and no rest since ! Hurrah 
for the new senator ! Let the new senator not for- 
get his true friends ! Rah ! Rah ! I am in no voice 



204 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

now to what I was at sunrise ! 'Twould ha' done 
you good to hear me then ! Rah ! Rah ! My name 
is Wattles ! Tell him that you heard Wattles' good 
pipe blowing! Rah! Rah! 

(Enter numerous citizens bearing Grosscrop on 
their shoulders, Quillet and others following.) 

GROSSCROP. — Set me down, good gentlemen ! 

(They set him down.) 

VOICES. — Hurrah for Senator Grosscrop ! 
Hurrah, the new senator ! 

GROSSCROP. — I am not worth so much honor 
heaped on me I 

VOICE. — A thousand times worthy! 

ALL. — A thousand times ! 

QUILLET. — A speech, senator! A speech! 

ALL. — A speech ! Speech ! Speech ! 

GROSSCROP.— I hold no gift of speech making! 
I am a plain man as you all know well that truly 
loves his fellow citizens ! 

VOICE.— Hear! Hear! 

ALL.— Hurrah ! Rah ! Rah ! 

QUILLET. — To a platform, senator! 

ALL.— Platform! Platform! 

(They lift him to a platform.) 

GROSSCROP. — Since you will have it so! But 
I lack art in it ! Most worthy friends — 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 205 

A VOICE.— Quillet! Three cheers for Quillet! 

ALL.— Hurrah ! Hurrah ! 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— They would have him 
speak and will not hear him when he does it. 

PINKWORT.— The fire of their enthusiasm sets 
them so ablaze that in its heat they are as children, 
not knowing what they want save noise and mad- 
ness. 

i\IRS. GROSSCROP.— Nor what they do either. 

PINKWORT.— Nor what they do- 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— It is most strange that in 
the mass the people show so little wisdom in them ! 
Their collective voice will hasten to pronounce 
with thunderous assurance bespeaking knowledge 
of the matter, those evil judgments that the poorest 
man's wisdom amongst them all, standing by it- 
self alone, would do more wisely than they do. 
They are as twenty deaf musicians that play at 
different tunes together, making of the result a 
fury of discordant sounds, yet taken severally alone, 
each has a touch of music in him. Together they 
have no judgment, but apart each has a mite of it. 

PINKWORT.— The level people have body only 
but no head. And therefore to supply this felt de- 
fect, you shall see them prone at last to come 
clamoring on behind some single leader's guide, 
though professing loudly to despise all leadership, 
save their free will. But in this choice too, they are 
as children, for they pick as leader always the 



2o6 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

noisiest flatterer of their weakness, and him that 
promises most and therefore performs the least. 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— But look, they give him 
some atention now ! 

GROSSCROP. — Respected citizens and my most 
honored countrymen ! That you are wise and by 
your wisdom governed and governing, needs not 
my voice in its support; that you are generous, 
noble and bear alive in you the honored spark of 
liberty, stands approved by your high action. 

1st VOICE. — Good senator! 

2nd VOICE. — Honorable, good senator! 

3rd VOICE. — Excellent, honorable, good senator! 

GROSSCROP. — I humbly thank you, gentlemen ! 
That I am selected now your humble servant to 
do your pleasure's bidding! That you make choice 
of me, I am honored in it; but that you chose me 
from among yourselves, where were so many honor- 
able ones to make a choice of, is honor thrice be- 
stowed on me ! 

VOICE.— Hear! Hear! 

ALL. — Thrice honorable senator! 

GROSSCROP.— Good friends ! Dear friends ! Be- 
fore you here I stand your chosen servant, in your 
deep debt, that renders in its payment to you his 
constant love and dearest service ! 

ALL.— He:ar! Hear! Hurrah! 'Rah! 'Rah! 



OUR NEW HERALDRY 



207 



MRS. GROSSCROP.— They are moved now to 
an ecstacy of madness. 

PINKWORT.— So they are. (Enter Julia.) But 
look to this girl ! How pale and ghastly as with 
fright as she comes ! 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— They look so that look 
on death's face ! She brings some bad report ! 
My fear interprets what it is! 

JULIA. — O mercy! O God! Kate in her room 
lies dead in a pool of blood ! 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— I feared 'twas so! 

PINKWORT.— Kate dead! Not dead? 

JULIA. — Stone dead and cold ! A grinning knife 
tight clasped within her bloody hand she did it 
with ! God ! God ! The sight ! 

PINKWORT.— A suicide! A suicide! It was 
she ran from the vines then ! 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— I knew it was she. 

JULIA. — O the sight of it ! I touched her cheek 
before I knew and it felt like ice ! O the sight ! 

PINKWORT.— Let the others know it! Pro- 
claim it loudly that all may hear ! It is not fit that 
these proceedings should go further on. 

MRS. GROSSCROP.— Do not so ! Twould bring 
confusion down on us and with this motley group ! 
Let us rather hasten quick to where she lies for 
what last service we may find to do. 

JULIA.— O that sight! 



2o8 OUR NEW HERALDRY 

(Exeunt Mrs. Grosscrop, Pinkwort, Julia and 

ladies.) 

GROSSCROP.— Brave men love liberty; I shall 
not ask you if you love it. 

ALL.— We do! We do! Hurrah for liberty! 

GROSSCROP. — It is most plain that you love it ; 
therefore are you brave men ! So were your fore- 
fathers brave men that on the field purchased 
this liberty for you ! Brave men love morality ; 
I read in your wise laws you love morality; brave 
men — 

A VOICE. — The people in the public square are 
by the thousand gathering to greet their senator! 
To the public square ! 

ALL.— To the public square! Bear him to the 
square ! 

(Exeunt all bearing Grosscrop aloft.) 
(The End.) 



H 488 85 4 



•lo^ 











Q*^ ^ ** 






^o 








Ho^ 





<- *'V..*\.0^ ^^. '«•* X* _ -^, 







^ --XVVN^ /N^ ^A •'S 









.-^^-c. 



* ' * • *^ 



* » » 




HECKMAN 

BINDERY INC. 

^^ OCT 85 

W~W' ^- MANCHESTER, 








}?-n^. 



► «Vo'> .0' 



